


Could have been, but wasn't

by Aamalysstuff



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Author fulfils fantasy of introducing German Music to a story, Break Up, Cheating, Drama & Romance, Everyone Has Issues, F/M, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Ivan is super rich, M/M, Natalya is a model, Nude Modeling, Past Relationship(s), Post-Break Up, Romance, alfred is a bit of a mess, past US/UK
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-01 12:27:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15774120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aamalysstuff/pseuds/Aamalysstuff
Summary: Alfred met Ivan at a bar.The man looked even more miserable than Alfred himself, which was a strong statement, considering that Alfred had gotten out of a relationship literally just a few hours before. So he had to ask what was wrong, he was curious."It is my birthday in a about an hour. My wife planned a surprise. I am hiding from her.”





	1. Chapter 1

Alfred was waiting for this 5 PM appointment to reach his studio.

A lady had called him to schedule a photoshoot for herself, as ‘ _gift for her husband_ ’ as she had put it. Sounded foreign on the phone, maybe Slavic. Alfred had tried to send her to someone else, as the sexy boudoir shots that could be given as a gift to the hubby weren’t really his specialty, but she had insisted that she didn’t want that. And insisted it had to be him.

Well. Okay. Maybe came across his work online or had seen it in the gallery down town and she was a fan. Whatever it was, he was flattered that she insisted, even offered to pay extra if it was needed.

Alfred wasn’t going to refuse extra money and he was pretty damn confident that he was a good photographer. He could work with her, regardless of the situation.

He was wrong. Very wrong.

Thing is – at 5 PM sharp there was a knock on the door of his studio.

“Coming, coming,” Alfred called out, getting up from where he was checking his equipment. He went to the door, turned the knob, pulled and….

Absolutely fucking froze when he saw who was on the other side.

Alfred knew her.

Of course he fucking knew her.

You had to, like, visit absolutely any fucking fashion website, and you’d find Natalya Arlovna Braginskaya's beautiful, moody face looking back you. She made waves during Fashion Week, where she was one of the most raved about models on the catwalk.

“You know me, da?” She said to him as a form of greeting, not bothering to push her dark, straight cut sunglasses off her face.  

“Yes…” he swallowed, “I know who you are.” He knew, yeah. Not because of her modeling job, but because he knew about _Natalya._

“Good.” Natalya pushed passed him, into his studio. He closed the door carefully, turned around and looked at her cautiously as she was walking around with her hands in the pockets of her trench coat.

A two tone Burberry trench coat. Kiku’s younger brother had flown in from Seoul and had dragged him and Kiku out shopping with him to get himself one, because it wasn’t _just_ your regular trench coat. It was one of those limited edition things, done in collaboration with this Russian designer that the younger Honda had raved about. Gosha?

Still – fucking expensive coat, that’s what it was, and when she was satisfied with looking around, Natalya pulled the knot that was holding it together, slipped it off her shoulders and just let it fall on the floor. Alfred cringed – fashion didn’t mean much to him, but money did and that was 2,500 dollar coat that she just let fall at her feet.

Natalya turned to him, finally took off her sunglasses, and looked him straight in the eye. Her face was perfectly blank, like she was staring at him from the picture taken off stage at a show. Not breaking eye contact, she walked closer to him, looming despite being shorter, studying his face like he was something she found stuck to her coat.

“Come on, Mister Jones. I will be allowing you to take my picture.”

Alfred frowned at that. Really, he had no idea what he was supposed to do in this situation. He didn’t want _her_ here, on the other hand, Kiku and his bro would flay him alive for missing the opportunity. But he knew who she was, and if she was here, he knew who he was.

Right.

He could still do this.

Alfred gave her the best smile he could give in the present situation, walked passed her and straight to where his camera and the lights were set up.

“So you said you wanted to do this as a gift for you husband?” He asked, starting up the lights and adjusting their intensity. “What did you have in mind for that?” He kept his tone as neutral and as friendly as possible.

“You do nudes, right?” She said bluntly, and started opening the buttons of her long, silken dress.

“Yes, but usually I prefer to discuss that kind of thing first and I….”

 “Nonsense.”

She had opened the buttons far enough to slip the dress off her shoulders, and let it gather around her ankles. Whatever Alfred had to say stuck in his throat as Natalya stood in front him, a scowl on her beautiful face, wearing only her shoes. She ran a hand through her long, pale hair and something in the movement caught Alfred’s eyes. He hadn’t meant to be looking for it, for saw it glinting nonetheless.

Wedding ring.

He followed the movement of that wedding ring on her dainty little finger, enthralled by it.

 “Pick up your camera and look at me.” Natalya said, her voice hard and biting.

What if he kicked her out? He _could_ kick her out.

What would happen then?

“Pick up the camera. I want you to take my picture like this.”

“What do you want?” He asked, swallowing thickly around the words.

Natalya blinked at him, delicate eyebrows meeting in a frown. Delicate eyebrows, lashes, cheekbones. Rail thin as she was, with her long limbs and small breasts, she wore her nakedness like fucking armor, with her head held high and her back ramrod straight.

Alfred had never thought he’d ever be faced with a tiny, bird-boned naked woman and feel a cold shiver of dread running down his spine. She might as well be wielding a knife.

That might have not been as efficient – faced with a weapon, he would have disarmed her. Faced with her naked body, she was the weapon, and made herself look hard and cold and threatening and _real_. Strutting into his studio with her fancy coat and her silky, flowy designer dress, she was could have easily been a vision from the ad of the next Alien flanker.

Someone that existed and was real, but _not really._

“What do I want?” She asked, her voice raspy and her accent thicker than it had been before. “Are you stupid? I want you to take my picture like this. Make it pretty, please, I need to give this to _my husband_.”

He could feel a very disgusting mix of emotions rolling in the pit of his stomach – anger at her, guilt, shame, anger at himself – and he wished he’d never picked up the phone, never had agreed to this. But then again, if she was here, it was pointless to think like that because most likely she would have found a way.

What the hell.

Might as well humor her. How bad can this get?

Alfred picked up his camera, started it up, looked Natalya up and down and tried seeing her as another subject.  How would you do this is she were just another model? He asked himself. She had a beautiful face, a heavy curtain of hair on her back. Very thin – her collarbones stood out, strongly defined, her ribcage pushing outwards against her skin. He zoomed in on her full mouth, wanting to capture the softness of her lips, the slickness of her hair, the sharpness of her bones.

“My husband is cheating on me.”

The cool, casual way in which she said it didn’t deter from the fact that the statement stood between them like a declaration of war. Alfred inhaled slowly through his nose, making sure his face was blank when he looked at her. He lowered the camera, took a step to the side of her.

“Look towards the window, please.” He said. She followed his instruction, and light catching over her cheekbones, “And lower your shoulder.” She revealed the long expanse of her neck to him, and even as she was turned away, Alfred still wanted to capture the change in her expression, how the skin around her mouth tightened, her eyes crinkled.

“He has always known he was meant to marry me, but that never stopped him from seeking out any of his _whores_.” Natalya turned sharply towards him and she had so much _hate_ in her eyes Alfred felt himself choking on it, and on the words that got stuck there. He gripped his camera tightly as a way to keep himself distracted.

“Do you know…” Natalya kept going, “…How our fathers came to arrange our marriage? It was when I was twelve. I was so young I could not understand what was happening. It was because they caught Ivan in bed with one of his _friends.”_ That made Alfred slightly queasy in the stomach to think about.  

“I’ve _always known_ about Ivan’s… _preferences_.” She spit out the word like it was vile in her mouth, “Our families knew, but it did not matter. He has had his fair share of whores to pick from, but it never bothered me, do you know why?”

She took a step towards him, and another, until she was standing right in front of his camera and he could see the all the freckles on the bridge of her nose. He lowered his camera after he took another shot, biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself from saying anything.

“Let me tell you – it never mattered, because Ivan was always supposed to be _mine_. Regardless of who he liked to fuck, he knew his place was next to _me_.” She never raised her voice, kept it at a low and even pitch, but he could feel the anger bubbling there. “Recently, he seems to have forgotten. I am here to remind him.”

Alfred closed his eyes and took a deep breath, focusing on the feeling of his chest expanding around the action and not on the fucking bile that was rumbling inside him. At this point, he had just about enough of her game, but he really didn’t want to be one to bring this shit into the open.

He was never the kind to back away from a challenge or cower in front of anyone – but it wasn’t fear or cowardice that made Alfred stand silent in front of Natalya, not even the tight fist that he had over his anger choking him into submission. Really, as he stood there, cheeks red, hands clenched against his camera, brows set, he could admit it to himself – it was the guilt, mostly, and the shame, and the fact that there was a part of him that thought he deserved her scorn.

But fucking shit, did it sting like hell.

“And how are you planning on doing that?”

Natalya snatched the glasses off his face quicker than he had the change to stop her, and backed away faster than a woman in high heels had the right to.

“Fuck, give those back.” He left his camera on the table before he went after her. He was close to useless without his glasses, being as shortsighted as he was.

“How do I look with these?” Natalya said, perking his glasses on her own pretty upturned nose. Alfred made to grab them off her face but she ducked away from him, keeping her hands on the frames. “Tsk, easy now, Alik, you would not want me to lose my balance and fall over. I would bruise. I would cry.”

“Give me my glasses back and get out. You made your point, now get _out._ ”

 “Nyet – you do not understand the point I am trying to make.” She looked at herself in the reflection of the window – luckily they were on the sixth floor of the building, or else people might have seen her. Natalya, though, she was unperturbed, she gathered her hair in a bunch, held it up over her shoulder and said, “Should I wear glasses? Cut my hair?” She took off Alfred’s glasses and threw them at him, though he caught them easily. “Or will you show me how you bend for _my husband_ so I can do it as well?”

Alfred could feel the angry blush on his cheeks at that and regardless of how much his guilt over everything made him willing to put up with from Natalya, _this was getting too much._ It was fucking humiliating.

“What the fuck would you want me to say? _Sorry for sleeping with Ivan?_ ” He didn’t meant to yell, but it came out as such.

He shook his head at that, “No, I’m not going to apologize. You said it yourself – you _knew_ full well when you married him that he was gay, you had an arranged marriage, you admitted that you _knew_ he’s had lovers in the past, you have your _own_ lovers, and _you never loved each other_.”

As far as Alfred had understood the situation, Natalya and Ivan’s marriage had been arranged by their fathers. Ivan’s father had been the older brother of Natalya’s mother.

Ivan had told him, though, how he was a teenager and sneaking around with some boy, the son of one of his father’s employees. Braginsky the elder caught them and damage control had to be done quickly. Enter Natalya – first cousin, seven years younger than Ivan, but it was decided then that the two of those should marry. Too keep Ivan’s _preferences_ the dirty little secret they were supposed to be – god, the thought of it sent a shudder through Alfred.

“It does not matter if we love each other or not! What kind of a spoiled child are you to think that something as inconsequential as love has anything to do with a marriage?” Natalya’s voice broke from it soft cadence, the pitch going higher, frustration mounting.

“What the hell, lady? How the fuck can you justify being in a marriage without loving someone or being happy with them?” Alfred’s parents were happy together, Alfred himself couldn’t even get his mind around the idea of staying with someone you don’t love or that didn’t make you happy.

Natalya though, she gapped at him for a second, before she let out an ugly bark of laughter that had no place coming from the lips of someone like her.

“I can see it, yes. You are a foolish, selfish American that is dripping poison into his ears! Is this what you keep telling him, why he keeps running off to your bed?” Her fists were clenched and shaking with barely suppressed rage. “His other whores all had the decency to know their place and kept themselves in check but _you…_ ”

She launched herself at him and tried to hit him with her tiny fists, but Alfred caught her wrists to stop her. Natalya struggled in his grasp, hair flying around her, yelling at him all the way.

“You come in, with your Disney Hollywood shit and tell him that love and _his happiness_ are more important that his duties and responsibilities! His duties and responsibilities lie with _me_.” She took advantage of Alfred’s momentary shock at the statement and pulled herself out of his grasp.

She threw him a look of disgust as she walked over to where her dress was still laying, picked up and slipped it on.

“How the fuck can you people justify _being constantly miserable and hating your life_ with something like responsibility?” He understood it when Ivan said it, but he couldn’t _understand_ it properly, not inside of himself.

The Braginsky family was richer than God, as far as Alfred had figured. They had their hands in every little piece of pie possible in Russia, legal or not. They were also not some sort of nouveau riche family, they had always been well off, but as the internet kindly provided Alfred with that information, the Communist regime had made them only richer and more influential with each passing year, influence that had remined even after the URSS fell.

Sure, things in Russia were a mess a several levels, you didn’t have to be super into it to understand that. Sure, Ivan’s family most likely contributed to that mess. But with that amount of power, wouldn’t it afford you at least some freedom? At least freedom enough to _choose how and who you wanted to be happy with?_

All of Natalya’s talks of responsibility and duty, Ivan’s own fucked up conceptions that he was some sort of slave to his family name and his damn _need_ to have someone look at him beyond that….

It was all sad.

Natalya finished buttoning up her dress and turned to Alfred.

“You seem to be more stupid than I thought. I see now that my husband has awful taste.” She shook her head and walked up to him, but didn’t physically attack him at least again. “Let me put this as simple as possible: you stay away from Ivan, and you keep him away from you. I do not care how you do it, make it happen. Stop answering if he calls, do not open the door if he shows up, _make it happen._ ”

Alfred has tried to push Ivan away, before they fell into bed the first time. It had been next to impossible, the man had been persistent and Alfred had eventually come to point in which he realized he didn’t want to push Ivan away regardless of the amount of guilt and shame that came along with being someone’s fucking _mistress_.

“ _Nothing_ you just said was enough to get me to reconsider.”

It had been humiliating and embarrassing and shameful, but goddamnit, Natalya didn’t present a good case for herself. Try as he might, at moment, he saw Ivan less as an asshole cheating husband, more like someone that was fucking trapped. Natalya seemed trapped in the same cage.

If she had come to Alfred and talked about hurt and pain and how much she loved Ivan – yeah, sure. If he felt for one second that her tirade was based in anything else other than possessiveness, misplaced ownership and a skewered sense of duty…

“I do not expect it to. You seem self-righteous. Do you think, that you are what….saving Ivan? Do you think loving him will make things better? _Tsk_. Let me tell you what will happen. Someone will find out about you. I do not know when or where, but it is a miracle you two lasted this long without anyone photographing you or finding out about it.”

Natalya picked up her coat, dusted it off a couple of times.

“They will find out who you are and they will find out that Ivan is _a deviant that is fucking an American whore._ Had you been a woman, it would have been scandalous gossip, but it would have blown over in a few weeks. Ivan would have gotten a few pats on the back about it. No one would _care_. But you are not a woman.” Natalya sighed heavily, suddenly looking tired.

“You accuse me that I do not care for him - that is a lie. I care very much about Ivan. The Russian press, his employees, his business associates in Sankt Petersburg, _his friends in the Kremlin_ …They will care about this. They will be all over it. Ivan inherited too much power when his father died. People have been talking for years, ever since Uncle died, that he is too young, too inexperienced.” Natalya scoffed.

 “Ivan is brilliant, and he handles everything perfectly, but they are discontent with the fact that he does not remember how it was like to do business in the _good_ days when they all got to call themselves _tovarisch_ while they were drinking vodka together.”

Alfred looked at her, with her mouth set hard, her eyebrow furrowed. He didn’t want to listen to the things she had to say, because unlike the other bouts of hatred she threw at him, this was justified, this was valid, this was what he didn’t let himself think about too much and too often.

Because whenever his thoughts strayed there, he had to agree that she was right.

“If the press would get hold of it, they would destroy him. All those _friends_ of his would turn on him and they would not let anyone _forget_. If one of the more ambitious ones would find out, if a rival would hear about it…they would blackmail him with it and have him in their pocket.”

Alfred swallowed thickly –

“He could always leave that place. He could…”

“Do you think they _let_ him? Of if he did, do you think it would not follow him? Or that destroying the good name of our family in Russia would be something that would sit well with Ivan? Are you really that stupid?” Natalya fastened the knot on her trench coat, picked up her sunglasses. She gave him a look, and asked “Or are you willfully blind that you refuse to see beyond the scope of your own fantasy?”

“I _can’t_ believe that things are really _this_ bad. You’re talking as if the only thing to possible to do is _accept_ this, as horrifyingly shitty as it is.”

“It is the only thing you can do. This is not something you can fight. It is the way things are. Best understand that and if you do care for Ivan, you will make sure to stay away from him.”

With that, she turned on her heal and headed towards the door. She had her hand on the door knob when she looked at him over her shoulder, eyes obscured by sunglasses.

“I sincerely hope I will never have to see your face again, nor hear your name. For Ivan’s wellbeing, that is. Goodbye.”

 The door to Alfred’s studio was opened and shut with a loud bang.

He stood there for a second, glaring at the door and still feeling Natalya’s perfume clinging to his nostrils.

“Shit.” All the anger and the shame and the humiliation of having to deal with her were threatening to to blow up in the back of his throat.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck her, fuck Ivan and fuck himself, really. Fuck this whole situation and Alfred’s stupid heart for breaking in his chest.

Fuck.

He wanted to put his fist through the wall, maybe his head too.

Fuck everything. Fuck Kiku for being right about this. Fuck Ivan’s money too, cause if he wasn’t as rich he was, he couldn’t have very well afforded all those plane tickets to come over and woo Alfred, or come over and fuck Alfred, or come over and make Alfred fall in love him so hopelessly and completely.

Most of all though, fuck Arthur. It was his fault he had met Ivan in the first place.

* * *

It had went like this:

Alfred met Arthur. Alfred liked Arthur. Alfred wanted a relationship with Arthur, so he followed him to London. That all happened in the span of three months, and everyone had told Alfred it wouldn’t last, and he would be a fool for picking up his whole life and moving for a guy.

Alfred had laughed and just thought they didn’t understand the romance of it. He’d been in _love_ or as close to being in love that he had experienced until then, in his 24 years on planet Earth.

Arthur had been hopefully optimistic about it, and it had been a fun six months. Alfred got some contracts are a freelance photographer that were much better paid than anything he’d gotten in the states. He made friends easily in London, met Kiku – who was definitely the coolest friend he ever made, the man was a _hentai_ game developer and took Alfred’s suggestions about Alien porn seriously and  made bank with it.

So life had been really good there for a while.

Until Christmas came and Alfred went back home to see Mattie and Mom. Arthur wanted to stay in London, to hang out with his brothers for Christmas. Sad as it was that they couldn’t spend Christmas together, Alfred resolved to come back home earlier to surprise Arthur. And he did surprise him. And Francis Bonnefoy, too, because when Alfred came back, the found them together.

Sure – it wasn’t in any sort of compromising position, they weren’t naked and sucking faces, but that didn’t matter. Actually, it looked like they had been having tea.

Francis was Arthur’s ex and not any ex – _the ex._ The painful one, the best one, the first one, the one that Arthur kept going back, the one he’d fallen in love with when he was fucking fifteen and kept falling for over and over again.

The dangerous one.

Legend had it, four months was the most they had spent separated. Alfred was counting nine months of Arthur in his life, and couple months of being apart from Francis before that. He had been pretty sure it was a pattern he’d broken, had been quite proud of that. But maybe it had time for them to start again.

Man, Alfred had been _angry_.

“It’s not like that,” Arthur had insisted “Francis was just dropping by to…” and he paused at that, like he wasn’t sure what he was about to say, and it had been enough for Alfred to turn around and bolt out the door.

So much for that.

Ironically, a more than a year after the whole incident, he bumped into Francis one day while he had been out for lunch. Apparently nothing had happened, nothing had been intended to happen.

“The only reason I was there,” the Frenchman had said with a sigh and a sad little smile, “was because I truly thought Arthur had found someone else to with that was worth anything to him.” He had shrugged, and it had made Alfred feel really self-conscious about it, remembering that night. “I always loved Arthur, and even them, I told myself that because of that love, I had meet you. You see, I wanted to know that he was happy, and I consider myself a man that is good enough and strong enough to look a rival in the eye and say congratulations.”

Francis had assured him that he didn’t even know Alfred wouldn’t be home that evening.

And yeah, Alfred…believed that.

At that point he was already knees deep in the Ivan situation, and Francis and Arthur had already been together for close to seven months, which had been new record for them. So Arthur didn’t cheat on him, and actually took a while to get over him.

Oh well.

Had he stayed and listened to Arthur and believed him, then maybe they would have still been together. Maybe in that case, Arthur wouldn’t currently be happily married to a his _highschool sweetheart,_ Jesus fucking Christ.

But he wouldn’t have met Ivan.

Because that night, Alfred had been so _pissed_.

Picture this – you get to London after a flight over the Atlantic, it’s fucking December 29th, the airport is a fucking mess, the roads are a fucking mess, you want to go home and you find your S.O. is there with their ex.

You’ve been living in the city for six months, but your closest friend is in Osaka for the winter, and you don’t know who to call that’s willing to keep you at theirs for the night. What do you do?

A: Go back home and try to work something out (unacceptable)

B: Call your brother, cry your heart out, hope he takes pity on you and suggest you come back home. Pay an absurd amount of money for another flight back to America, after being in London for less than 12 hours. (unacceptable, Mattie had told him way too many fucking times that he had been reckless in his decision making when it came to Arthur. As pissed as he was, as much as he’d rather be right back home, his pride couldn’t take that.)

C: Check yourself into a hotel, get black-out drunk and postpone life and decisions until after the New Year.

Yeah. C. It had been C.

But it had been late, on the 29th of December, most things in his affordable price range were fucking booked. He called four or five places. The only hotel that was remotely close by and not filled to the brim with people, was an absurd five star situation that cost more money than Alfred was willing to drop.

It didn’t cost more than a trip back over the Atlantic, though.

And Alfred had made more than decent money over the past couple of months, and sure, he was saving up to buy himself fancier equipment and maybe have enough to start planning an investment in his own studio.

And he wasn’t usually a big spender…

What the hell, let’s go for the fancy shit.

He was sad, he could use something nice.

Get drunk on some fancy alcohol.

So he went there, checked himself in and completely ignored the looks he was getting from everyone. He knew he looked completely out of place and stood out like a sore thumb, wet as he was and carrying slush, but he found himself not particularly caring.

And then he found himself in the hotel bar. Which wasn’t exactly full of people, but still had a lot of fucking people, most of them couples or people that had obviously known each other before. Holidays and all. Go figure.

The only other person that was sitting all alone – not at a table, not on a couch, not on one of the plush looking armchairs, but directly at the bar – was Ivan.

Ivan had been sitting there, looming and gloomy, drinking vodka like it was water, sticking out just as much as Alfred did. Not because he was in old jeans and a shirt – he’d a suit, a nice expensive looking one at that – but because he radiated misery and sadness more than Alfred felt.

And Alfred had found his boyfriend with another man in their apartment literally a few hours before. What the fuck did that guy have that he could be so fucking miserable?

So it bothered him for a few minutes, wondered what it was all about. He downed his whiskey, ordered another one. Waited until the bartender brought him refill, took his glass and walked over.

“I just found out my partner is a lying, cheating bastard. What’s your excuse?” He said, slapping on his best smile.

Later, after they become more well acquainted, Ivan had teased him mercilessly over that opening line. Alfred himself would forever be shocked at it worked, because the Ivan he had meet in any other occasion wouldn’t have deemed him with a second glance.

As it had been, maybe he had drank too much already and was well on his way to becoming spectacularly drunk, maybe he had been caught during one of his spectacularly horrific _down_ moments, maybe he was just so damn lonely. Most likely, a combination of all three – they each played their part, and Ivan had blinked at him for a couple of times, and take another swing of his drink and said:  


“It is my birthday in a about an hour. My wife planned a surprise. I am hiding from her.”

Right. Wife.

Alfred took a seat on the barstool next to Ivan.

“Happy birthday, then. How old are you? Why are you hiding from your wife? And where are you from? You sound Russian, but I’m never sure about accents”

And just like that.

They started talking.

Ivan had a pleasant face to look at, he could appreciate that, even though he was married. He was just as miserable as Alfred was. He was turning thirty, he didn’t share why he was hiding from of his wife, he was Russian, lived in Moscow of all places, but admitted that worked took him all over the world. 2 out of 3 answers, that wasn’t so bad.

The night had been fun, though. Alfred had shown Ivan concept art from Kiku’s Alien Hentai Game, and the man had been appalled and disgusted at the idea of sexy alien egg impregnation, but could agree that it was pretty cool looking. He showed him the blog where he posted his work and Ivan had complimented him on it.

Somewhere along the way, when Alfred was well on his way to being smashed, he convinced Ivan to play the question game with him, the modern updated version.

“Who’s your favorite superhero?”

 “Who’s a famous dead person you’d like to meet?”

“What would you take with you on a deserted island?”

“What did you want to be when you were a kid?”

Ivan answered cosmonaut, Alfred said the correct term was astronaut and they had a true and proper debate at that. Ivan was firmly of the opinion that the US did not deserve the title of Winner of the Space race. Alfred told him to shove that remark where the sun don’t shine.

Ivan had his private phone and his work phone on mute, to avoid answering calls from his wife. Alfred had turned his off completely after rejecting several calls from Arthur.

It hadn’t been love at first sight in the slightest.

Nothing had happened, apart from both of them getting extremely drunk and having a long conversation with a stranger that was just as sad as they were.

It could have been a one time deal, never-gonna-see you-ever-again type of deal, like people you meet in airports and end up sitting next to them on a plane. Maybe you click with them instantly, but you both know you won’t be keeping in touch after that.

So.

It could have been, but it wasn’t like that.

 


	2. Chapter 2

***

About three months after Alfred and Arthur’s official break-up, Alfred had moved in with Kiku.

He had spent some time debating whether or not to move back home, or anywhere else, but fuck that noise. He liked London well enough, he was starting to make enough connections and was getting work constantly. Just because he came here for Arthur didn’t mean he had to stay for him.

So he moved in with Kiku in his neat little apartment, shared rent with him, watched anime and got to test out the new updates for his games before anyone else. Sometimes, Kiku’s fashion-addicted, Insta-lover brother flew over from Seoul and asked Alfred to take _artsy_ pictures of him so he could share them with his subscribers.

All in all, life wasn’t half bad.

The whole Arthur business had hurt like a motherfucker for a while, but Alfred had always been the type to bounce back easily from break-ups.

“It is only because you were never in love in the first place, Alfred-san.”

“Man, Kiku, come on, don’t say that. I loved Arthur.”

“Apologizes, please let me reformulate. You were never properly in love, you were in love with the idea of being in love.”

“What does that even mean, Keeks?”

“Please do not take offense at this, but I suspect you were very enamored with the idea of making Arthur fall in love with you. You set out to accomplish that.”

Truth be told, looking back at it, maybe?

He’d met Arthur, decided he liked him and wanted to keep him. Romantic shenanigans ensued. He’d been so caught up in wanting the romance to happen that he didn’t stop to think about the details. Something had clicked in Alfred’s head that _Arthur_ was the one he wanted and he had to woo him and make the other fall in love with him – because he really thought he was already in love. 

Oh well.

“Hey Kiku, let’s do something this weekend.”

“I think I would prefer sitting in, if it is not bothersome to you. I have a deadline approaching with my latest update.”

So Kiku preferred to stay in and work on his Alien Game and Alfred decided to go out.

He wasn’t particularly sure where he was going, but he went anyways. Took his camera with him, maybe get some nice shots and see if he had anything to work with after that. He ended up in one of the fancier areas, the one that said _rich folks only_ and apartments cost you a kidney.

Alfred almost literally bumped into Ivan as he was exiting of those buildings.

“Oh, hey! Ivan, right? Remember me?” He put on a grin, walked up to the man confidently and started talking. No one could ever accuse Alfred of being shy.

“Da, of course. Alfred. What a coincidence meeting you here.” Ivan told him, looking pleasantly surprised.

“Oh, yeah. I was just walking around. How’s the wife? What are you doing here again?”

So they chatted a bit. Ivan’s wife was in Milan. He was here on business. Was supposed to leave tomorrow morning. Apparently Ivan owned an apartment there. Alfred didn’t mention that the first time they met, he had taken refuge in a hotel on the opposite side of the city.

“Do you have any plans for today? I wanted to grab a bite to eat or something, but I don’t have any plans after that. Think you wanna join me?”

Ivan had looked at him like Alfred had grown another head, blinking owlishly and probably didn’t know what to say for a couple of seconds. When he looked as if he made up his mind, he pulled out his phone first, gave a quick call in which he talked to someone in Russian, slipped his phone back into his pocket and agreed to the invitation. Ivan even let Alfred pick a restaurant, and they ended up in a little Italian bistro situation that caught Alfred’s eyes with its colorful interior design.

Alfred had been super happy with how the whole day progressed. He’d set out with no plans, ended up meeting Ivan – who was fun to debate with and really witty based on previous experience – and now they were going for lunch.

Alfred found out that Ivan came to London usually once a month, or once every two months. When asked if he had a lot of friends in town, Ivan said,

“No. No friends here.”

And Alfred thought that was just a fucking shame. No way was he gonna let that slide. He gave Ivan his number, told him to call when he would be coming to London again – that way he at least had someone to drink with and wasn’t all business, business, business.

Alfred had given Ivan his number strictly with the most noble intentions, he was sure about that. He didn’t start the whole thing off by wanting to hit on a married man – a married man that, for all intents and purposes, was firmly placed on the 0 of the Kinsley scale.

Sure, Ivan was cool and handsome and all, but most of the people Alfred interacted with were cool and handsome straight guys and he never gave them a second thought. He never gave Ivan a second thought either.

Didn’t really expect him to call to hang out, either.

But Ivan did. Not the next month, but the one after that – and if you want to be technical about it, Ivan didn’t _call_ , he texted Alfred, said he’d be in London for a few days. Alfred was pleasantly surprised, invited Ivan for drinks.

In hindsight, he should have thrown his phone out the window when faced with a text from Ivan, thrown it out the window, set it on fire, but the whole place and run the fuck away. Alfred hoped that with the experience and wisdom gained from the whole thing…well, let’s say that if Alfred, hypothetically speaking, get his hands on a time machine, go back in time to that particular moment Ivan texted him, that’s what he would do.

The reality of it is that even if Alfred would be given the power to change the shit course of their affair, he’d probably still go for it.

They went to a bar that Alfred suggested– _pub,_ Artur’s voice supplied in his head, _it’s called a pub!_ Alfred gave the proverbial middle finger to mental-Arthur, and kept calling it a bar. Ivan stood out sharply, he was still wearing this fancy ass designer suit and a scarf around his neck.

“I came over directly from a business meeting with some of my associates. It did not have to time to change.” The man had explained when Alfred teased him about it.

So yeah.

They went for drinks. Ivan could hold his liquor better than anyone else Alfred had met, Alfred was seriously impressed by it. Alfred got a bit drunk, Ivan might have gotten a tiny bit drunk too but he didn’t let it show.

Maybe Alfred started a bit longer than absolutely necessary at the man after a couple of drinks, but he was pretty damn sure he would have started at Ivan’s eyes even if the Russian had been a woman too. He had _violet_ eyes and he didn’t seem like the kind to wear contacts. That was some Liz Taylor shit right there, who had violet eyes? Who was allowed to have violent eyes – it should have been a given that everyone would stare.

It didn’t help that Ivan was handsome and unique looking, tall and broad and pale and with striking features. Alfred could look at him at any given point and feel his hand itch for his camera, because he was sure someone like Ivan made for a wonderful model. It was just something about him, with the way he looked – pale coloring, overly-pretty eyes and delicate eyelashes, but hook nose and high cheekbones.  

And the way he acted – looking all cold and mean and scary and looming, but his face got soft and sweet when he smiled, and if he relaxed, his lower lip protruded slightly and…

Alfred wanted to get him naked and in a dark room with a lot of shadows.

For art. 

While they were getting ready to leave, Alfred stumbled a bit and fell right into Ivan. The man caught him and helped him straighten up – and Alfred, drunk as he had been, took a deep breath and a scent that had absolutely nothing to do with the bar but absolutely everything to do with Ivan himself invaded his senses.

“Whoa – _Ivan_. You smell good.”

Now the thing is that Alfred ALWAYS had problems with his brain-mouth filter, in the sense that it failed him frequently. What was a boy to do? And there was also the other aspect, that people often chided him for being too familiar with people after only meeting them a few times, too friendly even when he wasn’t flirting.

Thing is – he wasn’t flirting with Ivan, not in the slightest. But Ivan smelled really, really good. He didn’t have much of a nose for perfumes, but whatever Ivan was wearing spicy and musky and… _sweet._  It made his want to lean in again, though he refrained himself from doing so.

See, Alfred definitely wasn’t flirting. Had he been flirting, Alfred would have leaned too close to Ivan, would press his nose against the skin of his neck and inhale deeply, try to figure out where the cologne ended, and the scent of Ivan’s skin began.

As it was, he blinked the image out of his head away, grinned at Ivan and asked:

“What are you wearing that smells like that?”

Alfred wasn’t sure, but the Ivan in his memory blushed at that. Whether or not it had been there that night or simply something Alfred’s own memory added as an afterthought in all the moments he reviewed the interaction, he wasn’t sure.

“Something Natalya picked up for me when she was in Paris. I am not exactly sure, it might be Guerlain.”

It was _Mouchoir de Monsieur_ by Guerlain, Alfred found out later.

 

***

Much later.

Years later.

So much later that by that point in his life, he had left London behind himself and he was living in Berlin by that point.

Gone was rooming with Kiku and testing out his hentais, gone was the London studio he bought for himself, gone was the little flat where he grew sunflowers on the window still in little pots for when Ivan came around.

Much later.

There was a period in Alfred’s life, that started that night when they went drinking. It was a period in his life that lasted a few weeks, stretched into a few months, a period of times in which Ivan’s cologne and the scent that clung to his clothes itched at Alfred’s nose.

Like he couldn’t get it out of his nose, that smell he came to associate with Ivan and with the times they met for lunch, for drinks, the times when Ivan called and Alfred answered. He was still wondering back then, how Ivan’s skin smelled under the cologne.

Then came the other period, the one that lasted…a while. More than two years, less than three, though Alfred didn’t want to keep exact track of time. That was when he stopped having to wonder and found out for himself, how Ivan’s skin smelled and tasted.

But.

The cologne. Ivan claimed he never bothered to look what it was called. Alfred never bothered to hunt the bottle down through Ivan’s luggage when they were together after that. It remained a mystery.

It was a mystery up until the point where he was walking through Alexanderplatz one day, hurrying to meet up with Gilbert, that someone walked passed him and they smelled like that. Like Ivan, like stumbling into him and getting his nose pressed up against his Tom Ford suits, like his mouth drooling at the thought of it.

Alfred literally found himself running after a guy – a guy that was still wearing a suit, but he was about a head shorter and had brown hair.

“Excuse me, excuse me? _Sprichst du Englisch?”_ The guy blinked a couple of times, looked at Alfred like he had grown another head.

“Ja? Can I help you?”

“What perfume are you wearing?”

The man almost burst out laughing at that, probably not expecting the complete randomness of the question. Still, he answered Alfred.

“ _Mouchoir de Monsieur_ by Guerlain. It is not very popular, though I appreciate the classics.”

“Can you write that down for me?”

The man was still looking at Alfred like…well, like Alfred was some weirdo that grabbed him off the street to ask what perfume he was wearing. Which – yeah, okay, Alfred was that weirdo. But he complied nonetheless. He even mentioned that the perfume in question was relatively hard to come across, made several suggestions stuff that smelled similar. Alfred didn’t want something that smelled similar, he wanted _that_ one, he was sure this was it.

_Mouchoir de Monsieur_ , and he hunted down a tiny bottle of it that he absolutely never wore. He took a whiff of it once and thought he got the answer – where did the cologne stop, where did the scent of Ivan’s skin start?

His room smelled like Ivan, but he hadn’t been present in Alfred’s life for _months_. And Alfred felt like he was 24 again and confused over a man he shouldn’t want, but did anyways.

 

***

In Alfred’s head, there was big box that had the word IVAN written on it.

Most days, he made a conscious effort not to think about a lot of stuff that resided there and shoved his thoughts into that box and refused to let them out regardless of how much they wanted to claw out.

Sometimes, though, he failed miserably at it, and let all the bad, no-good thoughts come out and play, like his poor skull was Old Trafford and his brain was the soccer ball.

From times like that, came the overthinking and the overanalyzing.

It started after Ivan kissed him for the very first time.

That had been a nice moment.

They had been friends, and Alfred was firmly of the opinion that they had been behaving like friends as well. Kept a respectable distance from one-another. It had escalated from just drinks when Ivan was in town to texting and the occasional phone-call.

Then, Ivan called him to tell him Happy Birthday. Asked him what he was doing. Alfred said:

 “Thanks, I’m having dinner with Mattie and my Mom.”

“Oh, you’re in the States?”

“Yeah, I’m my family. Mattie and I, we always go home for our birthday. It’s tradition at this point.”

It turns out – Ivan was also in the good old US of A, so he took an extra day from his trip and came over to see Alfred. He got his address, and two days after that birthday phone-call, Alfred found himself with a big, black, shiny SUV in front of his house, Ivan stepping out of it like he was some sort of VIP.

The neighbors stared, Mattie stared, his Mom stared, but Alfred was just happy that his friend came over and didn’t think too much about it. Ivan went through all that effort just to come over and wish him a happy birthday, in person. How cool was that?

He ushered Ivan into the house. Introduced him to Mattie and his Mom. Showed him his childhood home, and then said –

“Hey, come on, let’s walk around town a bit.”

And they did, they walked around town, went down to the beach, walked down the pier and all that. He had gone walking with Mattie down the same places a day before but walking with Ivan felt differently. Before he knew it, it was dark outside and the stars were out and Alfred look at the sky and started pointing out the constellations that he knew by heart.

The sky didn’t look the same in London, and stars weren’t something he got the chance to see over there. He would never want to move back home, he had been so glad to get out of there, but there were things he missed. His mom, his brother, starry skies and all the other stuff he never thought about when he was in London, but suddenly missed them like crazy.  

He could close his eyes and see the constellations over his home town across the back of his eyelids, spent so much time staring up at them while he was growing up, and it felt amazing to be able to share them with someone else again.

When Alfred’s gaze strayed downwards, when he stopped looking at the stars and looked forward to meet Ivan’s eyes, the man was looking at him like Alfred had punched him in the gut.

“Please let me kiss you,” he said, “Please let me kiss you once.”

“What? Ivan, I…”

And Ivan took a step forward, while Alfred stood his ground, and Ivan didn’t kiss him but he leaned down and touched his forehead to Alfred’s and they were basically sharing the same breath, and he still smelled so good, like that delicious cologne of his, and Alfred’s mind went absolutely blank.

But it didn’t, he still remembered,

_Wife. Married._

“Please let me kiss you once, and I will not ask for anything else from you again.”

That had been a lie, and Alfred was sure that Ivan himself didn’t believe it, you don’t just kiss someone once and then forget all about it.

But fuck, it was just a kiss, just a kiss, and Alfred had been already thinking about it, in the far off way you think about kissing your favorite actor. If you had the chance to kiss someone you really really wanted, but never thought you’d ever get the change to do it, would you kiss them? Of course you would, you just touch lips and it’s really not a big deal, you kissed people during spin the bottle all the damn time and it didn’t have to mean anything.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” He licked his lips, and looked at Ivan, and he was so damn close that Alfred could see – eyelashes and the different shades of violet in his eyes, and the lines on his skin where he smiled and it made his breath catch in his chest.

Never in his life until that point did Alfred anticipate a kiss like that, like a motherfucking Hollywood slo-mo thing, with his chest all tight and his hands clenched into fists against his sides. Ivan’s lips brushed against his once, and twice and again, but it wasn’t really a kiss, it was like a fluttering of lips against one another.

And Alfred’s instinct kicked in at that, he couldn’t handle being kissed like he was some fragile maiden that was ready to fall apart in Ivan’s arms. And the deal had been for one kiss, one kiss, and they should at least make it fucking count. So he grabbed a fistful of Ivan’s shirt and tugged at it, brought him closer, pressed their lips together forcefully and moved his mouth against the others.

The response he got was immediate, Ivan put his hand on the small of Alfred’s back and  pulled him flush against his chest, molding their bodies together like he was trying to force Alfred into him, like his rib cage would open up to make room for Alfred to crawl inside there.

Taken aback by the change and the force of it, Alfred gasped into the kiss. This was nothing like it had been before, when Ivan seemed to think he’s disappear if he touched him too hard, this was the kind of passion that was born out of desperation and hunger, and Alfred opened his mouth and let Ivan have his fill of him.

Ivan kissed him like they were underwater and Alfred was his only source of oxygen.

Alfred opened his mouth, let Ivan explore the inside of his mouth with his tongue. He clung to him and let himself be swept away by it, head underwater, exchanging breaths, swallowing sounds, heart pounding, knees weak. Alfred wanted to let Ivan consume him, heart, body and soul, and he could not, for the life of him, remember ever feeling like this.

He thought he knew passion, but he couldn’t remember ever wanting something like this. Alfred could not remember ever wanting to put himself on a platter for someone to devour and he felt like he’d gladly let Ivan, kiss him and bite him and tear at him. Ivan was kissing him and he felt like the inside of his head was on fire, hyperaware, but only of the two of them.

It wasn’t so much as a fall, as it was a sharp and painful crash.

He wanted all of it, and he wanted it now.

But he couldn’t want it.

Fuck.

Alfred was the one that pulled himself a from Ivan, took a step from his so fast he almost stumbled over his own two feet, pushed Ivan away from him for good measure.

“Shit, shit, shit, _no_.” He ran a hand through his hair and wanted to pull at it, because _damn_ who the fuck kisses you like? How the hell can you ask for one kiss and make it like that? How can you kiss someone like Ivan kissed him and then just do it once?

“Alfred, I…”

Ivan’s hair was all mused, and his cheeks were flushed and his lips were wet and shiny and kiss-swollen and he took a step towards Alfred but Alfred took two steps back.

“Stay there. Don’t.” He held his hands out in front of him in the hopes that it would put a barrier between the two of them.

“I understand.” Ivan replied, didn’t insist, averted his eyes from Alfred and looked down like he was ashamed of what he did and good, fucking peachy, he should be ashamed of it.

But fuck, his cheeks were still flushed and his lips were still wet and shiny and kiss-swollen and looked for good that Alfred wanted to kiss again, and again and drag him somewhere private and let Ivan have his way with him.

_What_?

Then there was the fire in his stomach that changed, it wasn’t passion anymore, but anger, bright and burning, ashamed of himself and angry at Ivan, for making him feel like this. The man was fucking married and Alfred had a stupid little crush on him. And Ivan went on and kissed him like Alfred was something he wanted and needed and Alfred fucking fell of it and right in that particular moment, he wanted to punch the man as much as he wanted to fuck him.

Alfred took a deep breath, left himself steady, trusted his voice not to yell or crack, looked at Ivan.

“Leave. Go, leave me alone. I’ll walk around a bit, you go back to the house, get your car and leave, I don’t want to see you when I get back.”

And with that, he stormed passed him without giving him a second look, because if he saw the Russian looking at him – wanting, or hurt, or pleading, or if he asked Alfred to stay…

So he walked around to let the confusing emotions inside him settle down, for enough time that Mattie started to get worried and called him to see where he was _. In the middle of bumfuck nowhere Mattie, I just kissed a guy that is fucking married, Mattie._

That’s was the precise night that the overthinking and the overanalyzing started.

Had he seemed interested? Had Ivan felt like he was hitting on him? Did he lead him on or…

He didn’t mean flirt. He liked Ivan, but he didn’t mean to…

He should have said no. He should have never let Ivan get so close to him.

He shouldn’t have given him his address. His phone number.

He shouldn’t have gone out walking with Ivan, he should have said no when he was asked for a kiss.

The mistake was kissing him.

No, the mistake was before that, right? When they met? When they started talking?

At what point did Ivan look at Alfred and think it was a good idea to kiss him? Scratch that, at what point did Ivan look at him and think he wanted to kiss him, or think that Alfred might want it back?

Did he plan this, or was it an impulse? Which was worse – premeditation or impulse?

Which one of them made Ivan less of a cheating bastard, Alfred more of a slut?

He tried to tell himself that it as just a kiss, but that flew out of the fucking window fast because Alfred had been _this_ close saying fuck it and telling Ivan to just fuck him. So it was a moot point, it wasn’t just a kiss, it was foreplay and Alfred had absolutely no idea what he would do if( _when)_ he would see Ivan again.

Fuck.

It wasn’t fucking fair, though.

Ivan was _married_.

Not fucking fair.

***

 

See, the thing is –

The big thing, the plot-twist, the Real McCoy –

Alfred had always thought that falling in love was this big, huge, grand thing that happened all at once, fast and hard and instant. You met someone and if you felt the connection, love came fast and overwhelming from the start.

He met Arthur, decided he liked him, _fell in love_ , right? Alfred’s whole experience with love was like this big mess of fire and heat and passion that got triggered inside him like a snap of fingers, like Kaboom, you’re in love, like Cupid’s arrow and eyes meeting across the room and _knowing_ you were in love, right?

Well, surprise motherfucker.

That was the thing.

Alfred never expected to fall in love in bits and pieces, in small moments and conversations about space and superheroes and food and drinking together and Alfred sending Ivan snaps of his fluffy socks when he was bored.

By the time Ivan kissed him, he was already in such deep shit there was no way getting out of it, and it took the best fucking kiss of his life to realize that he didn’t need to fall, because he was already falling, fallen, fell in love with Ivan.  

That aftermath of that kiss had only been a very rude awakening to it, the meeting point between his body and the ground.

So, where the fuck do you go from there?


	3. Chapter 3

When Alfred came back from the States, he came back with the firm conviction that he wanted nothing to do with Ivan ever again. No siree, he wasn’t going to let the man suck him( _ha_ ) into an affair, he knew better than that. He also really couldn’t justify it to himself on a fucking moral level to have sex with someone that was _married_.

He was better than that.

Also contrary to popular belief and the fact that he was predisposed to falling in love quickly, he wasn’t really the type to separate sex from emotions. And Ivan lived in fucking Moscow, regardless of how often he travelled to London and how much money he seemed to have, Alfred knew himself at least well enough to know that he wanted someone to be with him constantly. He needed affection, and he was the kind of guy showed affection physically, with hugs and kisses and hand holding, and all that touchy-feely stuff and PDA that made Kiku look away in embarrassment.

So he knew it was a bad idea, it was _such_ a bad idea.

But he couldn’t get Ivan out of his head.

“The nerve of that bastard, Kiku! What the fuck was he thinking?”

“I can’t begin to understand, Alfred. I do not know him, and it would be unwise to assume anything about a man based on what you told me.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I told you everything you need to know!”

Kiku only sighed and looked up from the papers he was reading. He was reviewing the plot of his latest expansion, but chose to print it all and take notes on that directly. Alfred had wanted an audience to rant to that was at least semi-engaged, and there was no level of engagement with Kiku is he had his laptop or was sitting in front of the computer. The reviewing-in-print method had been applied so it would satisfy both of them – Kiku could take his notes, Alfred had the satisfaction that at least his inner-turmoil only had to compete with the written plot of the game, not the vast expanse of the internet.

Win-win.

So the Japanese man sighed, set down his manuscript, and leaned forward on his couch.

“I simply mean that you might not have the most unbiased opinion about him, or about the situation. I can’t give an opinion based on a so little information”

“Bullshit. I told you all you need to know about Ivan to give an informed opinion.”

“No, you have not.”

“It’s cheating. He’s a cheating bastard, and he’s trying to get me involved into his own crap.”

Kiku made a non-committal sound at that, like that little hmm-ing noise he sometimes used when he thought Alfred was wrong, but didn’t want to directly address the fact. Alfred wasn’t about to let him go with that alone, oh, hell no. Kiku was his friend, he at least owed him to be honest and give an opinion about it.

“Don’t just make that face at me. Come on, Keeks,” Alfred was running out of steam to just rant away at how much of a dick Ivan was, without proper encouragement. “You need to give me more than that here.”

Kiku didn’t say anything for a long time. When he did, it wasn’t exactly the type of encouragement that Alfred expected.

“I trust you know that Im Yong and I share the same father, but not the same mother, correct?”

“Yeah, he told me he’s living with his mother is Seoul, but…”

“And did you never consider that strange?”

Kiku had told him that his parents live in Osaka, and that he had a younger brother in Seoul, but he never elaborated on his family history. He had always assumed that it meant his parents had split up, his dad had another kid with another woman after that. It happened. Divorce was common.

“You’re parents are still together?”

“Of course.”

“So your dad had a fucking kid from an affair and your mother stuck around with him after that?”

Well shit, that was unexpected.

“No, my father did not _have an affair and my mother stuck around after the fact,_ Alfred. My father had a lover in Korea, which my mother knew about. She was fine with it. My father spent three years in Korea, during a time in which it was close to impossible for both of them to travel.”

He was talking about it casually, like he was explaining the state of the weather, and not the fact that his dad had a kid with another woman in another country, _while his mom knew about it_? That kind of shit went against every principle Alfred associated with marriage.

“That’s…how could she do that to herself?” He didn’t even try to hide his outrage at it, he was too high strung on emotions and the sheer WTF of the whole thing. Who just condones _cheating_?

“It was not as black and white as you see it. The situation was complicated. My parents were honest with each other. I do think it hurt my mother, and it hurt my father to know – or not know – about what she was doing in Osaka. However, at the time, for them, it was the easier to accept the situation than to try to fight against it.”

“That’s…” horrible, that was the first thing he wanted to say, but Kiku raised his hand to stop him before he had the change to go further.

“I understand that for you, it might be very difficult to understand. It is not something I see myself accepting either, and it is hard for you to comprehend that something like this can happen with the consent of both parties.” Alfred made to open his mouth again, but Kiku gave him a stern look that effectively shut his mouth. “Many people condemned my father’s choices and my mother for accepting it, especially after the birth of my brother. However…”

“There’s no however!”

“ _However_ – we are no discussing my family history. I am telling you this as a way to make you understand the following: you do not know, and you can never simply assume about the state of someone’s relationship with their spouse and the sort of agreements that might go on between closed bedroom doors.”

That made Alfred pause. He tried to think about the stuff he knew about Ivan and his wife. Not much – he knew her name, he knew she travelled a lot for work. He knew he met Ivan while he was hiding from her, so that definitely pointed to something being wrong in their relationship. However, it didn’t justify going about and kissing Alfred.

Sure, Ivan barely spoke two words about her. Sure, he shied away from conversations about her. Sure, whenever Alfred thought about loving relationships, he always thought about people that talked about each other constantly.

But that pointed towards Ivan and his wife having a cold relationship at the moment – maybe they had loved each other passionately at some point and things went sour? But couples go through sour patches in their relationships all the damn time, a lot of them worked through it.

Hell, Alfred remembered times in which his Mom and Dad would fight and barely said two words to each other for days and weeks at the time, it didn’t mean either of them went out to sleep with other people or search for lovers.

Right?

“That’s not the point, Kiku!”

“Of course it is. You are asking for someone to justify your anger at Ivan, which might be poorly direct in this case. I am not saying you are wrong, I am simply saying, his situation might be more complicated. As is often the case – rarely do people cheat just for the sake of it.”

“I don’t care if he cheats on her or not – I just don’t want him to use me for it!”

“And you shouldn’t let him do it. Complicated situations like this have the tendency to get extremely messy. The only reason why things worked to a decent conclusion within my own family is because both my father and Im Yong’s mother knew from the start that it was a temporary arrangement that had a very set time frame in which it could develop. All parties involved could handle it, neither of them held any illusions about what the future could hold for them. There was no place for such naivety there.”

Alfred’s jaw fell at that, at the pragmatic way in which Kiku explained everything. He recovered from it quickly, and in spite of his better judgment, he found himself slightly insulted by the whole thing.

“Did you just call me naïve? Like I _wouldn’t_ be able to handle it?”

Kiku sighed again, closed his eyes and shook his head. Alfred felt really insulted now, the man had just confirmed his theory.

“I am not saying that exactly.”

“But you are saying that!”

“I mean that you hold ideas of love, commitment and fidelity very close to your heart, and you are also very passionate and emotional, it’s wise to…”

“Emotional? Like a girl? Like I’d be the crazy mistress from Fatal Attraction, chopping up bunnies and shit?”

“No, nothing as such. I do not think, however, you have can be emotionally detached enough to conduct an affair.”

Which…yeah.

Hindsight is a bitch, because it’s not like Alfred ever thought Kiku was _wrong._ Kiku was right when he said that Alfred wouldn’t able to detach himself enough to think of a relationship, any sort of relationship, with a set expiration date. And for what it’s worth, Kiku had said exactly the same thing that Alfred had been thinking in the end – that it was a bad idea, he shouldn’t get involved with Ivan, best avoid it, best run away from it as far as he could.

But Kiku also did something very, very, very bad, no-good, wrong.

He made Alfred consider things he never wanted to consider before – like Ivan’s relationship with his wife.

At first, he had been so caught up in the righteous fury – how dare Ivan assume that Alfred was some whore, willing to spread his legs for a married man?

But then – with Kiku’s absolutely _horrible_ story about how his brother came into existence, it planted the seed of wonder inside of Alfred’s head, and it made him think, like really think –

Why do people cheat?

Well, fuck other people, that wasn’t the important thing here. Why did _Ivan_ want to cheat on his wife?

So.

Alfred a few days of stewing on the issue, one night when he had been really drunk and upset…he did something he should have done a long time before.

He googled Ivan.

Man, had that been an experience.

There was a whole lot about him, a lot about him in English. With pictures and explanations about his family, and accusations of corruptions about his father, and bribery charges that were never proven, and loosely being tied to so many illegal shit that Alfred’s head was swimming in information.

There were also, fucking pictures of Ivan’s wedding. _Many_ pictures of the bride. There had been a whole spread in Vogue, in which  Natalya Arlovna Braginskaya was looking at the camera with a moody face, dressed in a wedding gown by a guy called Slava Zaitsev, with a pretty awesome looking headpiece.

So that was the bride.

The article that was attached to the photo shoot was for the Russian edition of Vogue, but damn it. Google translate was his friend.

It featured an interview.

Alfred didn’t go read the whole thing, he only really need the first few sentences:

“ _The wedding of the year is set to happen in Moscow between Ivan Braginsky, heir to the highly esteemed Braginsky family, and Natalya Arlovna, his first cousin. They marriage had been announced years before, and amidst rumors and controversy. We had the chance to speak to the rising star of fashion, trying to find out if all the gossip holds any grain of truth._

 _Is it a marriage of love, or simply an arrangement to keep wealth and status within the family?_ ”

And Alfred promptly clicked the ‘X’ on the tab, because _shit._

He didn’t need to read further than that. It was bad enough that he read that.

‘First cousin’ was icky. Super icky.

‘Rumors and gossip’ was common enough and absolutely every celebrity wedding was all about rumors and gossip.

But everyone had been writing about the ‘rumors and gossip’ when Bran and Angelina were filming Mr. and Mrs. Smith and they had denied it all. Until Brad and Jen broke up and what do you know – the rumors and the gossip were true.

And ‘simply an arrangement to keep wealth and status within the family.’

It didn’t mean that that was the case.

But

But

That was the problem – that right there was the fucking reason why Alfred should have stayed the fuck away from poking at this shit, because now there was this whole issue –

See, on side of his head, you had all the glaring issues, the problems with Ivan. The marriage. The wife. The fucking model wife that was absolutely gorgeous.

The fucking model wife that was absolutely gorgeous, that no sane straight man would say no to.

But.

Ivan had kissed him, so the straightness wasn’t really that straight – bisexual cheating asshole, then.

But

The question had been planted there along with the fucking article, and now apparently he was asking himself the same question that the Russian media seemed to be asking themselves as well – was it a marriage of love, or simply of convenience?

It still didn’t justify cheating. Even if it was – it still didn’t give Ivan a free pass to cheat.

Did it?

What if she knew?

What if it was normal for them? It had been okay for Kiku’s mom and dad, right?

It didn’t mean that Alfred wanted any part in it.

But

He thought about it.

* * *

 

After kissing the soul out of him underneath the stars of Alfred’s childhood home and then subsequently leaving him there to stew in his own Ivan-triggered-mess, the man had been strangely absent from the picture.

Like – sure.

Mouth-fuck me and then just leave me be, without any sort of explanation or justification after the fact, right?

Not that Alfred wanted anything to else to do with Ivan and the shit-storm he was bound to create, and Alfred _had_ told him to leave him alone. Right.

Well – that’s wasn’t exactly 100% true. Ivan had tried to call him, precisely once, a day after he had arrived back in London. He called once, Alfred didn’t pick up. Actually, he had been out with Kiku, so they could stock up on food, ice-cream, those little bath bomb thingies that Kiku was so fond of, ice-cream and snacks and beer and…okay, Ice-cream.

Alfred bought a lot of ice-cream, from the classic Ben&Jerry’s Rocky Road to the vegan, all organic Matcha kind that Kiku had been meaning to try out. They went wild. He hadn’t exactly been dumped, but it sure felt like he had intense boy-issues and Alfred wasn’t ashamed to admit that he was a stereotype. Heartbreak and ice-cream went together like PB&J.

Not that Alfred was heartbroken, just angry and confused.

Fuck Ivan.

As a way to be petty, he changed Ivan’s name in his contact list as ‘Fucking Cheating Bastard’ and left it as such, but he didn’t call back and Ivan didn’t insist.

But other than that? Silence. Absolute, radio silence.

Alfred was fine with that, it’s not like he needed Ivan to make his presence known in any way shape of form. Alfred was thinking about it more than he should have at that point without the man himself being present, god knows how much worse the situation would get otherwise.

So a few days passed and Alfred dread having missed calls – though none of them turned out to be from Ivan. Them a full week passed and then a second week, and Alfred wasn’t really thinking about him much anymore, managed to get it out of his head.

Luck, however, was seriously not on Alfred’s side, and decided to that Alfred had been granted a lot enough period of mental relaxation and therefore it was time to fuck shit up again.

Or Ivan just decided to be a cunt. That might have been a thing too, fuck Ivan.

Because Alfred had been out for work, he had a photo shoot with a young couple that were doing their pre-wedding pictures and when he came back from that, he found that they had company – of the Russian variety.

He opened the door to the apartment he shared with Kiku, got inside, into the hallway and instantly froze. Before he stepped into the living room, before he heard anyone talk, before anything, right the very instant he opened the door, he noticed that there was another pair of shoes next to Kiku’s. A pair of very shiny and very expensive looking shoes that didn’t belong to either of them, approximately 4 sizes too big to belong to Im Yong.

So he took the extra two steps to walk into the living room, and sure enough – there he was. Sitting on the couch, opposite to Kiku, with a cup of green tea in front of him. Ivan Braginsky, dressed in one of those fine looking suits of his, with his socked feet squeezed into a pair of Alfred’s fluffy Hulk slippers.

See – it was Kiku’s thing, he made everyone take off their shoes when they stepped into the house, and offered them slippers.

Both of them had a vast collection of slippers. Kiku  bought the basic kind, that could be considered classy-slippers. Alfred bought Hulk slippers and kitty slippers and yeti-feet. Kiku never said anything about it, but Alfred could always feel the general air of displeasure and hopelessness whenever he looked at Alfred’s slippers choices, like it was an attack to his dignity for Alfred to wear something like that in his presence.

So when Alfred took one look at Ivan, sitting on their couch, nice suit and all, Alfred’s eyes were immediately drawn to the acid green Hulk slippers that Kiku no doubt forced on him. So the first feeling – apart from the surprise and the sheer shock of Ivan being there with them, was…well, he was touched.  Really touched, because he guessed that forcing Ivan to wear the ugly Hulk slippers was Kiku’s way of being protective of him, in the pettiest of ways.

Alfred loved his friend a little bit more, considered for the millionth time how much easier his life would be if Kiku would be into actual 3D people and not 2D tentacle-girls.

Point to take from this – Ivan. There was Ivan, sitting on the couch in their living room, locked in staring contest with Kiku.

“Alfred, you are home early.” Kiku said, but he didn’t miss a beat, still radiating aggressiveness in that polite-but-cold way of his. “As you can see, we have a guest.”

“Yeah, I noticed. ” It was his cue to do stand closer to Kiku and glare at Ivan too.

What the fuck was he doing here? Alfred didn’t care, he wasn’t about to let them man stick around for long. He crossed his arms over his chest and put as much distance between them as possibly conceivable within the small confines of the room.

“Hmm. I know Mister Braginsky and yourself are acquainted, though he did insist that he had very important matters to discuss with you and therefore needed to wait for you here.” Kiku said in that polite and frosty way of his that made the room drop a couple of degrees. It was kinda scary and super cool, like Kiku’s passive attack chilly politeness – the opponent took HP damage and slow just because they were in the area.

Ivan, though, he was about twice Kiku’s size and wasn’t about to let himself be cowed. But Kiku was pretty hardcore, so before Ivan said absolutely anything, he most likely decided to activate his own special move – in this case, Alfred thought it would be aptly named Loom and Gloom. It meant he slapped this little smile on his face that promised nothing good, looked at Alfred and before opening his mouth to say anything else, he got up and straightened his back.

“I would have hoped that Alfred mentioned more than simply being acquainted, as you put it.” He took a step forward and towards Alfred and really, regardless of the ridiculousness of  someone like Ivan dressed in a fancy suit and wearing fucking Hulk slippers, he was still…

Ugh.

“Still, Ivan, what are you doing here?” Alfred asked, voice sounding not-really as commanding as he would have hoped, but still at least he didn’t let the edge of betrayal get heard in it.

“I thought that the last time we saw each other, we left things off on the wrong foot. I did not want to leave things as they were, so I thought it might be best to make a visit to clear things up between the two of us.”

There was this one second in which Alfred was oddly touched by the fact that Ivan felt the need to clear things out between them personally and not by phone, but it was smothered very quickly by sheer audacity of the man that though he could just come knocking on his front door and Alfred was just supposed to let him in and hear him out? Like what if Alfred wanted nothing to do with him – as was the case?

And how entitled to you have to be, to just fucking show up and say that they had to talk? Talk about what? Clear things up? They were fucking clear from where Alfred was standing.

Except they really weren’t and he really wanted to ask Ivan some stuff, right after he yelled at him a bit about how much of an asshole the other man was. And maybe ki—

Fuck Ivan.

“No.”

“What?”

“I said, no. I don’t think I want to clear anything up with you.”

And he stood his ground at that, almost resisted the urge to turn his nose up, but the gesture – burrowed from Mister Arthur Kirkland’s way of dealing with pests – seemed very appropriate give the situation.

There was a very thick silence settling between the three of them, awkward as all hell. Alfred was very pleased with being able to shut Ivan up, Ivan looked confused because he probably didn’t expect to have his peace offering turned away so swiftly, Kiku looked between the two them like he didn’t know if he had to break out the popcorn or if he should slither away unnoticed and let them have their little gay Mexican Stand off in peace while he worked on animating lewd facial expression on busty lolis.

The sheer awkwardness of the situation was suddenly broken by a shrill sound, coming from Kiku. His fucking ringtone, that’s what it was, that thing had the tendency to start ringing at the best(worst?) times ever. The man got up from his seat, picked up his phone from where it was shrieking and vibrating on the table. He looked at the caller ID, sighed and turned to the both of them –

“I must take this. Excuse me – …“ With that, Kiku answered his phone and went to his own bedroom to talk to whoever it was (Alfred knew it was either his Mother or his brother. Either way, conversation with them were usually much too long)

Alfred looked longingly at the closed door of Kiku’s bedroom. _Traitor_.

“Alfred…”

“No. Leave.”

Alfred knew very well that he sounded like a petulant child. Alfred just didn’t care about it. Ivan’s eyes rolled so hard there was the real possibility they’d get stuck like that.

“You are being very difficult. Am I really asking for so much? I simply wanted to talk to you.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to talk to you. So you can just leave to take care of whatever business you got going in London this time.”

Ivan frowned, his eyebrows scrunching together and mouth set in a grimace. He muttered something in Russian under his breath, something that Alfred thought was probably a curse. One of his hands rose to rub at the bridge of his nose.

“You were my business in London this time. I flew from Moscow because I wanted to talk to you.”

“Bullshit.”

Bullshit, no one that was as busy as Ivan took an international flight just to have a chat with Alfred. With Alfred, of all people.

Arthur had called him like 20 times the night he had found him with Francis, and then tried to talk to him again in the following week, but that was truly the most effort someone had ever put into getting their point across with Alfred. And Ivan didn’t give any hint of really wanting to talk him apart from that one phone call. Now he was in Alfred’s living room, looming over the place like he owned it and looking like he was some sort of ad for fancy vodka or luxury watches or something – him with his fucking Russian empire of money and communism and fossil fuel and natural gas and his Balenciaga strutting model wife.

Men like Ivan didn’t have time to fly over from fucking Moscow to talk to Alfred. Who did that? His college boyfriend hadn’t taken the time to walk across campus to talk to him, a whole string of guys that Alfred thought he’d fallen in love with, and none of them took the time to get into their car to drive 20 minutes at night if he’d been upset, and he was just supposed to believe that this man – rich and powerful as he was, fucking flew over from another fucking country to talk to him?

Who did that?

“No. I came here to talk to you. I am not leaving until I do.” Ivan said, with his hand crossed over his chest and tapping his foot impatiently. If he had been wearing his nice shoes, the sound would have probably echoed in the room. As it was, he was wearing Alfred’s acid-green slippers with scowling Hulk on them, so the effect was somewhat lost.

“I don’t believe you. No one does that sort of shit just to talk!”

No one did. No one.

But….that wasn’t true.

Alfred had done it. Not one the same scale, but…

When he’d been 18, he’d gotten into his car late one evening and drove one town over so he could be there at midnight because he’d wanted to surprise his then boyfriend by being the first one to sing him happy birthday. And he’d drove all night at some point with snacks during mid-terms because the guy he’d been seeing then told him he was tired and wanted a break. And took his whole damn life and packed it up in boxes and moved across the Atlantic just to get at Arthur’s door because he really thought it might be the one time it would work out.

So truth be told – Alfred knew all about chasing people down personally to talk to them, see them and have a change to be with them. But the thing – he’d always been on the other side of the equations, he’d been the one pulling all sort of shit like that because he thought they had all been worth it.

No one ever did something like that for him.

But here Ivan was, telling him that he’d flown over from Moscow, to get the chance to talk to him.

“No one flies across Europe just to talk!” He repeated, his voice heavy with disbelief. He had definitely raised his voice to a pitch higher than he’d expect it.

“They do if it’s important enough” Ivan just shrugged as he said that, so matter-of-factly and casual about the whole thing, like he didn’t just turn over all of Alfred’s expectations.

And Alfred’s heart was _ba-thump_ -ing in his chest, doing a happy, excited little dance because, really? _To talk to me? Little ole me?_

And if it had been any other situation, if it had been absolutely anyone else doing something like that for him, Alfred would have swooned like a southern belle and thrown himself shamelessly at Ivan. He could imagine himself jumping into Ivan’s arms around his shoulders and his legs wrapping themselves around his middle, kissing the breath out of him for being so…so… _ugh_. And he could actually do it, Alfred bet he could, because Ivan’s frame was tall and broad, and Alfred bet he was strong enough to hold him up, something no one had been able to pull until them.

And he’d laugh against his mouth and they’d fall into bed together all happy and warm and he just knew it would be fucking fantastic.

As it was, he told his stupid heart to shut the _fuck up, quit it, you’re not allowed to be so happy over this._

“Do you pull this kind of shit for your wife too?”

“Alfred…” Ivan sounded absolutely exasperated with him and _good_. Maybe if he could annoy him enough he’d fuck off for good.

“So? Do you? Sleep around and then go back to her?”

“You have no idea what you’re talk about, so I suggest you stop talking about this altogether.”

“Why? Is mentioning your wife suddenly off limits? Does it ruin the whole appeal of wooing someone else if they suddenly start talking about Natalya?”

Ivan’s face was all blotchy red and he looked angry, the scary kind of angry, with his eyes blazing bright and – if Kiku had been out here and not hiding in his room like a fucking pussy, he’d probably be urging Alfred to have some sense in his head and stop talking.

As it was, Alfred wasn’t about to let himself cower in front of Ivan.

“Just because you like hiding from her like a coward doesn’t mean I have to indulge you.”

“My relationship with Natalya is none of your business. You know absolutely nothing about it, about me, about us, how dare you?”

Ivan voice rose pretty damn high, he didn’t expect the other man to yell at him. But no matter, it was just more fuel in the long and ever-growing list of ‘Why Ivan was an Asshole and Should Get out of Alfred’s life.’

But he came all the way from Moscow to talk to Alfred.

“Get out.” Alfred told him, voice as firm as it would get.

“No.”

“It’s not negotiable. Leave.”

“I did not come all the way here for us to yell at each other and then go back without settling anything. You will calm down and we will talk. I have enough time.”

“Hell no. I won’t calm down and I don’t want to talk to you.”

Ivan stood his ground, the proverbial unmovable object to Alfred’s unstoppable force.

 “I am not to leaving.”

So they stood there glaring at each other for a couple of seconds. Stubborn bastard, that's what the other man was. What was there to do about this?

Well, when Kiku was finished with his talk, he opened the door to his room, stepped out and was greeted by the sight of Alfred Jones literally pulling Ivan towards the door.

Hey, it got the other man to move, right? Alfred counted that as a victory.

“What are you doing?”

“I am getting you to leave.” He was holding on to Ivan’s arm and pulling him towards the exit. The other man was big and heavy and all, but Alfred knew he had a pretty strong grip to pull him along. Ivan had also been very surprised when Alfred boldly grabbed him by the wrist and started pulling him, so he had to choice but to follow.

They were always making fools of themselves, but it wasn’t like Ivan would cause any more of scene than they already were, and it was just Kiku there to judge them.

“I am not leaving.”

Alfred opened the door to the apartment and literally shoved Ivan outside.

“Well, if you aren’t leaving, you can just hang out right in front of my door, because I don’t want you inside.”

And at that, Ivan sort of…smiled at him, a creppy little smile that Alfred should have taken as a warning.

“If I am to wait here until you calm down, may I at least get my shoes back?”

Alfred just closed the door in his face.

If he could afford to fly to London just for a chat, he probably could afford to buy himself new shoes.

 

* * *

 

 

Kiku’s phone rang again.

This time, both Alfred and Kiku were sitting on the couch, side by side.

It had been approximately three hours since Alfred had unceremoniously kicked Ivan out of their apartment and it was the sixth or seventh time Kiku’s phone was ringing.

The phone was sitting between them, and the both looked at it, then at each other. Kiku sighed, picked up the phone and answered.

“Hello again, Feliciano.”

Alfred could hear a string of desperate sounding cries on the other end, intermingled with some intelligible English from the other side of the conversation.

“Yes, yes, Feliciano. I understand he is still there.”

Alfred swallowed drily, he could imagine that Kiku already had a bit of a twitch about his eyebrow.

There was a pause on the other side of the conversation, and there was another voice yelling in the phone. Yelling on the phone, like Kiku literally had to pull the phone away from his ear at that. That meant the phone had been passed from Feliciano to Lovino, and Lovino didn’t even had to yell into the phone, they could hear them through the walls.

They had thin walls.

Feliciano and Lovino were the twin Italian brothers that lived across the hall from Alfred and Kiku. They were really nice, though Lovino had a short temper and whenever he lost said temper, Alfred and Kiku could hear him shouting if they were sitting in the living room. Like now – he was shouting into the phone, sounding very distressed and slightly trembly.

Alfred didn’t bother to actually listen to the words, he got the message.

Kiku tried calming them down, promised them that they would deal with the _situation_.

The situation was Ivan.

Ivan, who had been very serious about waiting outside until Alfred calmed down enough to talk to him. The man basically sat down in front of their door and refused to move.

That wouldn’t have been a problem – Kiku worked from home, Alfred didn’t have any work scheduled for tomorrow and it’s not like the Russian man could be in London indefinitely. He had to leave eventually, and him and Kiku would have been perfectly okay with waiting him out. They had enough rice, nori and ice-cream stocked up to last through the apocalypse, they could live on that until Ivan decided to leave.

The problem was Feliciano and Lovino. The two Italian brothers were, apparently, scared shitless of the Russian man camping outside their door.

As far as Alfred had understood, it went like this. Feliciano and Lovino both worked at their Grandpa’s Italian restaurant a few blocks away. They had to start their dinner shift – about three hours ago, just after had closed the door in Ivan’s face.

So the two nice Italian boys had gotten ready for work, said their prayers to the pasta gods or whatever Italians did before they set out into the world, opened their door and were greeted with a very big, very angry looking Russian wearing Hulk slippers.

Alfred imagined that Ivan had turned to them with a smile and said hello. Feliciano and Lovino promptly closed the door and called Kiku to tell him about it.

Alfred’s jaw had dropped, Kiku had looked confused and then looked at Alfred for guidance as to what he was supposed to say to them.

“Just tell them to wait a bit, he’s gonna leave soon enough.”

That had been three hours ago, Ivan hadn’t left and Feliciano and Lovino were sounding more and more distressed with each phone call. Lovino started swearing and cursing, accusing them of bringing the Russian mob on them.

_“We left Sicily so we didn’t have to deal with shit anymore, you fucking bastards!”_

“I understand, but he is really quite harmless, I’m sure he doesn’t mean any harm.” Kiku had tried to reason with them, but they were no hearing it.

_“Harmless my ass, what kind of shit did you fuckers get yourselves into? Is it drugs? It’s drugs, isn’t it? That bastard American is smuggling drugs for the fucking Russians, isn’t he?”_

_“Ve~ Grandpa can help you if you’re in trouble with the Russians, but please make him leave now. Do you want us to call Grandpa? He knows ‘people’.”_

Alfred had just about wanted to die at that.

He’d already sent Kiku outside twice to tell Ivan to leave already, he even been kind enough to let the Japanese man offer Ivan his shoes. Surely that was a good deal – Ivan got his shoes back, he left, Italians would be happy, Alfred would be safe and then he could focus on re-building his good name in front of his neighbors that now thought he was in trouble with the Russian mob.

That was stupid, Ivan wasn’t business with the mob. Probably. Most likely.

He’d have to Google that.

Regardless, Alfred’s offer had been more than generous. The answer?

“Nyet. No deal. Keep the shoes. I am not leaving until Alfred comes out to talk to me himself.”

Well.

Shit.

“Alfred?”

“Yeah, Keeks?”

“Alfred, I know you are uncomfortable with this situation, but…”

“Uncomfortable is the understatement of the century, bro.”

“Regardless of your feelings, right now, I think you do have to go talk to him yourself. Lovino is threatening us he’s going to tall his Grandfather to bring in people to _deal with the situation._ ” Kiku did the bunny ear movement with his fingers for the quote-unquote. Alfred swore he’d be the best neighbor ever from this point on, because he really didn’t want Lovino and Felicino’s Grandpa to send ‘people’ over to ‘deal’ with any kind of ‘situation’, even though he seriously hoped that didn’t mean what he thought it meant.

Alfred sighed.

Seriously, his anger had cooled down already, and it was replaced by sheer, unabashed confusion, as the whole situation was absolutely _crazy_. Ivan was absolutely fucking _crazy_. He just sat down in front of Alfred’s door and sat there, kept sitting there, three hours later he was still fucking there, just waiting for Alfred to get out of his apartment so he could _talk to him._

This was crazy. It was fucking crazy.

 _“Ve~ he’s just there to talk to Alfred? What does he want to talk to him about?”_ Feliciano had asked when Kiku explained it to him.

_“Probably wants to ‘talk’ to him alone and in private, and then we’ll never see that stupid American ever again.”_

“No, Lovino, mister Braginsky is a…friend of Alfred’s. They had a bit of a disagreement about…”

_“It’s drugs, just say it, it’s drugs, isn’t it?”_

_“Did they have a lover’s quarrel? I heard some yelling before. Is it a lover’s quarrel, is that why he’s still sitting in there? Ve~ That’s so romantic, that he’s waiting for Alfred to forgive him!”_

_“I’m telling you, stupido, not everything is romantic. There’s nothing romantic about getting your teeth punched in because you owe the Russians money!”_

_“He’s very scary looking, Alfred, can you please get him to leave? You can take him to Grandpa’s restaurant, I will call him ahead and tell him to prepare a big bowl of pasta for the two of you to share. Then you can make up! It always works for me and Ludwig.”_

Feliciano thought it was romantic. That boy was a complete one-hundred-and-eighty away from Ivan, but apparently he was just as fucking crazy if he thought this was romantic.

It wasn’t romantic. There was no part of Alfred that thought this was in any way endearing or romantic.

He had to admit it to himself though – whatever it was, it was definitely _something._ Like a thing, a gesture. A grand gesture type of thing. It sure made a damn grand ole’ statement to pull something like that. He had to hand it do Ivan, at the very least, he knew how to bring his point across.

Except it was embarrassing and Alfred suddenly had a whole new level of sympathy for his first crush – the one he had confessed to in front of the whole school, with balloons and music and a huge poster. The poor boy had gone beet red, ran away, hid in the bathroom and refused to come to school for a full week afterwards. Avoided Alfred like the fucking plague afterwards. Alfred had been heartbroken at the time, but now he thought about it wanted to cringe.

He’d have to look the guy up and apologize for it.

“Alfred?”

“Yes, Keeks?”

“You have to. I’m sorry. I’m an unable to help. I tried. You have to go talk to him. Preferably, get him out of the building.”

“But…”

“You have to.”

Well, that settled it. When Kiku used the Nobunaga voice on him, he knew that shit was real and he had to do it.

And really, Alfred thought to himself. At first, he just wanted to spite Ivan and thought it was a matter of pride to stand his ground. Now, it felt less like a matter of pride and more like Alfred being a coward.

Was Alfred F. Jones a coward?

No, he most definitely wasn’t. Alfred F. Jones was not a coward, he could do this. He could go talk to Ivan like a sane rational mature adult and get him to understand that had to _poof_ right out of Alfred’s life. So he got up from his cozy spot on the couch, got his Nikes and his coat. Paused a little, looked at Ivan’s shoes sitting there innocently. He considered whether to take them with him or not, but decided against it.

Hey – he was going to out there to talk to the man. He could be a little bit petty about it.

So Alfred took a deep breath, opened the door and stepped outside.

Ivan was sitting not exactly in front of his door, he had moved right next to it, sitting with his back against the wall and looking at something on his phone. When the man heard the door open, he looked up from whatever he was reading. His long legs were stretched out in front of his, he had taken off his coat and had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Alfred felt sorry for his clothes.

Alfred’s eyes met Ivan’s unfairly pretty violet eyes.

Alfred stared. Ivan blinked, let out a soft, surprised, _oh_ , and then smiled at him like Alfred was the best damn thing he didn’t expect to see.

Damn. Alfred blushed. He felt a little bad about the whole thing.

“Hello, I am very glad you decided to come out. I think your neighbors are scared of me.”

“They are _very_ scared of you, Ivan.” Alfred said with a sigh. He closed the door to the apartment behind him, took a step over Ivan’s legs and sat down next to him in the hallway. He pressed his back against wall, refused to look at Ivan, but he felt the other man’s gaze on him.

“That’s a shame.”

“No shit. They think you’re a mobster. The called us having a fit about how dangerous it is to deal with the Russian mob.”

“They are right, you know. The Bratva are no joke.” Ivan said seriously, and Alfred let out a pained groan.

“Ivan, seriously, _dude_ , you’re not helping here. Now they think I’m a drug dealer or a junkie or both.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me _dude_ again, it makes you sound so… _American_.” Alfred turned to Ivan, and the man had this look of vague distaste on his features. It made Alfred chuckle.

“Ivan, I _am_ American. We went over this before. What would want me to call you? _Comrade_?” He made it a point to use the worst, most fake sounding Russian accent that he’d learned from years of watching Cold-War-Era action movies. Ivan gave a visible shudder at that.

“Please never use that accent ever again. And the term would be _tovarishch_.”

“Whatever, Ivan. You said you wanted to talk. So let’s talk.”

Ivan looked away from him at that, and if Alfred wasn’t mistaking, there was a distinct pink dusting across his face.

“I was hoping we wouldn’t have to do it here.”

“Yeah. Probably would be ideal. My neighbors are terrified to leave their apartment because of you, and I think they need to get to work already. Oh, and Kiku said I should get you to leave the building, so we can’t go back inside either.” Alfred sat up at that, dusted himself off. Turned to the Russian and gave him a small smile of his own. “So – l suggest we do it the classic way. Let’s go get a beer. Or seven. I could use a beer.”

Normally, Alfred would lend Ivan a hand to help him sit up, but in this case he decided not to. It would be a bit too weird to have any sort of direct skin on skin contact with Ivan at this point. However, Alfred did stare just a little bit at Ivan’s forearms as he was getting up. They were all veiny and his hands were huge.

Ivan straighten the sleeves of his shirt, tried and semi-succeeded to fix his clothes after hours of sitting on the floor. Slipped on his coat. Made eye-contact again.

Alfred averted his eyes. Cleared his throat.

“Okay, ready? Ready, right? Let’s go, we can go to the usual place, unless you prefer something else.” Alfred had already turned and taking a couple of steps away from the door, when he heard Ivan calling out to him. “What?” He asked, seemingly confused.

Ivan didn’t say anything, but looked down at his feet. Alfred’s eyes followed, met acid-green scowly Hulk faces staring back at him. Acid-green scowly Hulk faces that were moving, and Alfred realized that Ivan must have been wiggling his toes inside of them. Wiggly toes. That was cute.

Alfred took a damn second to curse every damn deity he didn’t believe him for sending Ivan his way and making everything Alfred found attractive, only adding a ring on his finger and subtracting the faithfulness.

“Alfred, do you think I could have my shoes back now?”

“Oh, shoes? Yeah, no deal, you aren’t getting those back.” Alfred told him with the biggest, brightest retail grin he could muster.

“You want me to go outside in slippers?” Ivan asked, but his voice was surprised, not angry.

“Yup. This is payback for making my neighbors think I’m a drug dealing junkie. You don’t have a say in this one, Ivan.”

Ivan looked at his feet again, then at Alfred. He seemed to be thinking about it for a second, and Alfred was sure he’d protest and ask to have his shoes back. That was fine with Alfred, really. His pettiness quota had been satisfied already, he wouldn’t actually force Ivan to go outside in house slippers.

Ivan, however, seemed to reach a conclusion in the timespan of between two heartbeats. Looked at Alfred, dead serious, shrugged his shoulders and said,

“It is fine. I supposed I deserve it.”

Alfred gapped.

Ivan straightened his back, and walked right past Alfred with too much dignity for a man that was wearing a wrinkled Armani and Hulk slippers.

Alfred was left there for a couple of moments, staring at Ivan’s back, until the man turned his head to look over his shoulder. He gave Alfred a smile and asked –

“Are you coming?”

“Yeah, coming.”

And now that he was also aware of the process, Alfred could literally feel the moment he fell a little bit more in love with Ivan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So - This story is the most fun I've had with writing ever and as a result, it's almost like....writing itself, which is very satisfying from the point of view of the authoress. I hope you guys are having at least half as much fun with reading it as I am with writing it.


	4. Chapter 4

 

Alfred and Ivan could fool themselves all they wanted with shit like –

_But I wanted him,_

_I needed him,_

_I had to have him._

The truth of the matter was – in both of their cases, they had to make a choice.

In Alfred’s case, it had been a very conscious choice to sleep with Ivan. He couldn’t say it was alcohol, he could say that he was under any sort of influence. For better or for worse, he was as sane as possible given the situation the first time it happened.

Did that make it better, or worse?

Regardless, it went like this –

It was summer, it was a few weeks after Ivan unexpectedly showed up at his home, terrifying his neighbors and going out to get drunk with Alfred. They had been out very late, talking, and unfortunately Ivan had confirmed the rumors and gossip that yes, his marriage was arrange, yes his wife knew he preferred men, yes – he loved her, very much, he had thought her _multiplications and divisions_ there was no way he was going to love in the biblical Man-shall-with-Woman sort of way.

Natalya, for what it’s worth, apparently didn’t ask him too many questions, as long as he gave her the same courtesy to not ask questions in return. They kept their distance. They slept in different beds, a lot of times they slept in different countries.

For all intents and purposes, Ivan wasn’t a cheating bastard.

He was a bit of a coward that let himself get bullied into a situation that he didn’t want, that Natalya didn’t want, a situation that was forced on them by their family with the emotional blackmail and the heaviness that came from words such as _family honor, responsibility and duty_.

It left a very sour taste in Alfred’s mouth. But it wasn’t exactly cheating – was it?

Hell no, it was fine. ‘twas kay.

Alfred’s heart could rest assured that at least he wasn’t gonna be a homewrecker.

Yay?

It didn’t make the situation itself better or easier, but it did mean that Alfred didn’t have to feel so shitty about himself.

“It is still a bad idea, Alfred.” Kiku had told him wisely after giving him a play-by-play walkthrough of their interactions.

“I know, Keeks, I know. Don’t worry. Ivan and I talked a lot. I ain’t gonna do anything _stupid_.”

Kiku wasn’t convinced. He was so not convinced that Alfred could feel it radiating off his him in waves, displeasure and worry. Kiku was too polite to do anything about it or comment further if he wasn’t asked. However, Alfred could imagine that if Kiku had some sort of magical anime powers, he’d start generating Kanji all over the place, spelling Danger, Warning, Warning, No, Do Not Proceed.

_Alfred, stahwp._

_Oh no, Baby! What is you doin’?_

Kiku would say that, if his general polite and mild-mannered Japaneseness would allow him to say stuff like that.

He could admit it though, to himself at least,  that he was attracted to Ivan, that he wanted some things from him – friendship and companionship and, well…sex.

So Alfred thought, he was already in shit.

Just wanting Ivan was bad enough.

He was already going to hell for it anyways – might as well go the full nine yards and go all the way with it. In for a penny, in for a pound and all the other similes that one could apply in this situation.

So the next time Ivan called to tell him that he was in London and wanted to meet, Alfred had already decided that he’d sleep with him, made up his mind and there was no going back from it. In a way, it was oddly freeing to send the big ole middle finger to all those traitorous thoughts in his head.

Ivan asked to meet him for lunch – which was all good and well, but it did kinda throw a bit of a wrench in Alfred’s plans. It’s easier to seduce someone late at night over drinks than it is in the middle of the day over lunch, but Alfred wasn’t going to let _that_ stop him. He had prepared a fool-proof approach on how to get Ivan on-board with his plan.

“Hey, Ivan?” Alfred asked him, after the waiters took their empty plates away.

“Hmmm?” Ivan’s eyes were scanning the menu, probably contemplating whether to order dessert or not. Usually – Ivan didn’t have much of a sweet tooth, but he had been persuaded to share stuff with Alfred in the past.

“Do you want anything for dessert?” He asked, with what like to classify as his _seduction voice._

“That is what I was trying to figure out.”

“I have a suggestion.” There was the urge to wiggle his eyebrows, but he didn’t.

Maybe he did, but only a little.

“Yes?” Ivan obviously didn’t catch it.

Alfred waited for a bit, for Ivan to look up from the menu an make eye contact with his. He needed to create a bit of a dramatic effect for this. Ivan looked at him, Alfred held his gaze for a second and tried to do the whole ‘gaze at someone from between your eyelashes’-sultriness.

“Oh, you know…” He meant to for that to sound coy. He had no idea who successful he was being at it – if he was being honest with himself, seduction was never Alfred strong point. He was all for big-grand gestures of love, but seduction required some level of subtleness and Alfred never really got the point of being subtle.

Why be subtle and dance around something when you can just go ahead and say what you wanted? God – or Vishnu, or Buddha, or Allah, or the giant Spaghetti Monster -  gifted them with a mouth and the ability to talk so they wouldn’t have to go through the whole hinting and hoping-you-catch-my-drift business.

Ivan’s eyes narrowed a bit, not in annoyance but something that looked like genuine confusion crossed his features for a second. Then, the other man sighed, let the menu sit on the table and looked at Alfred in defeat.

“Please don’t tell me you want to go for Starbucks for dessert again. My blood sugar levels cannot handle it today.”

Alfred’s jaw literally dropped at that and he was genuinely insulted. What the hell? Did Ivan not realize what Alfred meant? Did Ivan think Alfred pulled the bedroom eyes over Starbucks?

“No, Ivan, I don’t want Starbucks,” Alfred tried again and trying to keep the whole seductive act going, but there was this fucking furious blush on his face. He didn’t know how much of it was from feeling awkward, insulted or angry at Ivan.

God – or Vishnu, or Buddha, or Allah, or the Giant Spaghetti Monster – knows that the other man had been so… _understanding_ when Alfred had told him he was only interested in being friends with him.

He just…kinda…accepted that Alfred didn’t want to be his mistress and said that would be perfectly fine with him, he was okay with Alfred just being his _friend._

But see, the thing is – Alfred didn’t _want_ to be Ivan’s _friend._ He had enough friends.

“Then what do you want, Alfred?”

Why couldn’t Ivan just be some sort of asshole? Couldn’t he just…throw Alfred against a wall and go all ‘ _I shall make you mine, da’_? Alfred could…like… put on a bit of a show of resisting.

The whole… _No, don’t touch me, it’s wrong, we’re not supposed to do this_ – that kind of stuff, and then finally concede to Ivan’s wiles and let the other man have his way with him.

Kiku had shown him his fair share of BL and yaoi.

Why did Ivan have to be…a real life adult, and not some sexy manga seme? He really had to go and ask Alfred what he wanted.

This way, Alfred really had to own up to saying it, instead of going around it.

Well – he could go around it.

It would take some patience and hinting around and actually putting in the work of seducing him. But Alfred had already made up his mind about sleeping with Ivan today and if he actually had to start the seduction thing – he might lose his nerve. His brain may just kick itself back into gear and Alfred would find himself considering that maybe he _was_ better off with just being friends with Ivan.

“I want to have sex.” He blurted out.

It really caught both of them by surprise. Alfred wasn’t expecting the words to just…come out of his mouth like that. Ivan didn’t expect the other to just go out and say it either. Alfred had a little moment of private panic over it, that he expertly masked with a huge smile.

Ivan just _looked_ at him, blinking. 

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“No, I don’t think I heard you properly, Alfred. Did you just….?”

“Yes.”

“And you want to…?”

“Yes.”

There was pause. The waiter came over and asked them if they wanted anything else. Alfred was a bit too humiliated look at the man, Ivan just waved him off and asked for the check.

“I thought you said you only wanted to be friends. What changed?”

And what the fuck was Alfred supposed to answer to that?

The truth was – he had wanted to sleep with Ivan. He knew that. Ivan probably knew that Alfred was really attracted to him too. He couldn’t really place his finger on _what changed_ exactly, and it wasn’t like Alfred thought it was a good idea or something. He still thought it was a bad idea to get into bed with him.

But he was also going to regret not doing it, and it would just kinda hang in the back of his head for a long time if he didn’t. And he saw on it on facebook – that Arthur was currently in a relationship with Francis. And Mattie had told him that he was moving in with Carlos.

And a couple of weeks ago, Kiku and him had went over to Feliciano and Lovino’s to apologize for the whole scaring them into barricading themselves into their apartment situation – and there he met Ludwig, Feliciano’s tall, buff and intimidatingly German boyfriend. Apparently they were an item for close to seven years and going strong.  

And Alfred was...he didn’t want to think about himself as someone that was _lonely_ , but he…was.

And Ivan was…for all his arranged marriedness and the problems he presented, Ivan was the closest man he’d ever found to fit all his wants in a partner, and Alanis Morissette singing about “rain on your wedding day” and “meeting the man of my dreams and his beautiful wife” was suddenly all too real and appropriate.  

And Alfred didn’t think that by sleeping with Ivan he’d convince him to leave his wife, he didn’t. Alfred was a good lay, but not _that_ good. But he wanted…something from him.

Like indulging in a chocolate cake after you lost ten pounds. Or spending money on going to a concert to see your idol when you should be putting away towards your student loans.

Like one night, to get it out of his system.

“Ivan, you either take me up on the offer or not. Just…” he tried to find something appropriate to say, something witty or sexy or charming, but what came out was a laugh “…Decide fast, until I come back to my senses.”

Ivan looked torn between emotions, and Alfred could see a whole rainbow of feelings dancing in his eyes, from wonder and amazement, to confusion with a dash of anger, and he literally held his breath until Ivan’s face settled of something soft and a little bit sad. The other man didn’t say anything when the waiter came with the check, he just paid him and got up from his chair. Alfred, meanwhile, found himself rooted on the spot, not really knowing what to do with himself until Ivan took a step to his side of the table and offered him his hand, palm open and fingers outstretched like he was asking for a dance.

“Come on. Let us go. My apartment is not far from here.”

Alfred placed his hand in Ivan’s, and got up from his chair. His knees felt a little weak. He had hoped that Ivan would take him up on the offer to have sex, obviously, but there was also a little part of him that had also hoped that Ivan would turn him down and refuse to sleep with him.

Now, though, the reality of it all, and Ivan’s warm fingers against his, it was all just a little bit overwhelming.

So.

This was really happening, huh?

Ivan pulled him along, gentle and guiding, and Alfred was stupidly grateful for that, that Ivan had the foresight not to let go of his hand, because if Ivan let go, Alfred might have bolted in the other direction. It was one thing to fantasize about having sex with a married man, it was another to walk hand in hand towards his apartment, then into an elevator, up to his penthouse suite which was meant to be shared with someone else.

Alfred didn’t register much of the walk there, and when they were in front of Ivan’s door, the other man let go of Alfred’s hand to take his key out of his pocket. There was soft jingle of metal against metal, Ivan took the key and before he put it in the lock to open the door he paused. Turned to Alfred, made eye contact and there was a question in his eyes.

Like he was asking Alfred’s permission – which was stupid, because Alfred had asked for this in the first place. He wasn’t about to back out of it.

Right?

Right!

But it was sweet of Ivan to give him another chance to leave.

Instead of an answer, Alfred leaned in closer to Ivan inhaled deeply, lungs expanding and filling up with Ivan’s delicious scent. He was hyperaware of his body and the rolling anticipation in the pit of his stomach. Ivan let out a relieved sigh, opened the door. Took Alfred’s hand again and pulled him inside.

They both took off their shoes and coats, left them in the foyer. Alfred – if he wasn’t as nervous as he was, he would have appreciated his surroundings more.

The whole place was amazing, like the kind of thing that could be photographed for someone’s home décor Pintrest – all shiny and lacquered wood, leather couch and heavy velvet curtains. He took a couple of steps inside and looked around.

Suddenly, he felt…shy. Which was stupid, he was here to have sex, which he had suggested, and he’d had sex before enough times to know how this was supposed to do. But it had been a long time since he’d felt this awkward in someone’s house. Usually, the nerves were a purely pleasant sensation of anticipation. This time, he was looking around Ivan’s beautiful house and felt distinctly out of place.

Like an intruder.

Like a thief that was there to stage a premeditated robbery, thought he wasn’t there to steal jewelry or money.

He was there to steal the master of the house.

Ivan walked up behind him, put a hand around his middle and pulled him in and against his chest. Alfred felt himself tense all over. Ivan’s arm tightened around his middle, his other hand raised to caress Alfred’s cheek. He felt Ivan’s breath against the shell of his ear, ghosting across the skin of his neck and he shuddered all over. He exposed his neck to the other in an invitation; Ivan started leaving kisses over his skin. Alfred wondered if Ivan could feel his pulse racing where he was kissing him, and he willed himself to relax.

What the hell was wrong with him? This wasn’t his first rodeo, but he felt so much like a blushing virgin he was embarrassed with himself.

Fuck it.

He was here to sex, right? Sex was supposed to be fun, sex was actually one of Alfred’s favorite pass times. There was no reason to be this anxious about it. There was no fun to be had if your partner was a mess of emotions during the entire time, was it?

So breathed in, put a fucking gag-ball on the voice inside his head that was calling him a slut and thought to himself that he was going to make this worth it. He spun around sharply, put his hands around Ivan’s neck and kissed him, open mouth, tongue in his mouth, bodies pressed together.

Maybe he got it wrong. Maybe he wasn’t the thief, the thief was Ivan, a thief that was meant to steal away Alfred’s breath and his heart and his rational thinking and stake a claim on him.

It wasn’t fair, though, because Alfred wasn’t some damsel in distress that was getting swept off her feet by a dastardly gentleman here. He was fully aware of what he was doing and what he was getting himself into – or at least mostly aware of it all. There was no stealing, Alfred had come willingly, he had asked for it and proposed they do this.

He couldn’t blame Ivan.

They made their way to the bedroom, mouths kissing, hands groping and pulling at each other’s clothes. Alfred’s t-shit was the first to go, and he started working on unbuttoning Ivan’s shirt and pulling it down his broad shoulders. And when Ivan’s chest was bare to him, Alfred let his eyes drink in the sight of him. A whole lot of bare skin, all porcelain white and stretched over a whole lot of muscle and a just a little bit of chub, all of it fucking gorgeous and it made Alfred want to take a bite out of him.

But he couldn’t take a bite out of him, because that might leave a mark, and you don’t want to leave a mark on your _married_ lover, do you?

So to distract himself from it, he kissed Ivan again, and Ivan kissed back, and walked him backwards towards the bed until Alfred felt the back of his knees hit something solid. He had one hand on the back of Ivan’s neck, the other feeling the expanse of skin on his back, and pulled him closer, _closer_ , pulled the other man over him and they tumbled together on the bed.

Ivan left his mouth, started kissing down his neck, down his  chest, over the dips of Alfred’s abdomen.  He felt the other open his buckle, the buttons of his jeans that were pulled off of his hips a second later, along with his boxers. When Ivan’s mouth enveloped his dick, he was already hard. Alfred gasped at the warm wet sensation, felt his whole body vibrating with want. Ivan started sucking and Alfred sighed, and it was like the bedroom and the apartment and everything sighed along with him.

He was pretty damn sure he had never been this turned on in forever, hadn’t been this excited about having his dick in someone else’s mouth _ever_ , like he was sixteen again and getting his first blowjob. But Alfred’s first blowjob had been a been a total bust and though he’d gotten quite a few guys to suck him off since then, it was never like _this_. This exciting and forbidden, like something was getting rewritten in his head _– bad, no, married, you shouldn’t, can’t_ getting turned _yes, please, go on, more, just like that, keep going, don’t stop._

And Ivan was good. Ivan was _so good_ , this man with his expensive, delicious cologne and his money and his power and the ring on his finger that was kneeling between Alfred’s legs and sucking his cock like he was born to do it.

Alfred raised himself on his elbows, he wanted to look at Ivan as well. He ran his fingers through silky soft ashen blond hair, and that made Ivan _look_ at him. Oh, fuck, there was something just so damn hot about him, about his unfair violet eyes and his cheeks hollowing when he sucked and his lips red and wet with spit over Alfred’s dick. And Ivan did not look like the kind of guy that sucked dick like pro, and definitely not the kind of guy that had any business sucking _Alfred’s_ dick.

And Alfred always had pretty good control over himself during sex, thought he could go as far as to say he was a _gentleman_ when it came to receiving blowjobs – never been the type to buck his hips up or shove his cock down anyone’s throat and never really saw the appeal of all the porn with choking and gagging on dick. But now he thought he might have really wanted to see Ivan choke a bit.

Because Ivan always looked so damn _cool_ and composed and handsome and put together, like someone Alfred shouldn’t even think about touching.

Because Alfred spent so much of his life being one paycheck away from being flat-broke, he wore his jeans until they started falling apart, owned three pairs of Nikes and two pairs of Chucks that he had for ages. The most money he ever spent was on his camera and was happy to get a discount on his glasses. His roommate was two steps away from being a Hiki-NEET and his most prized possession was his Captain America comic book collection and it was by some weird twist of fate that he even met Ivan in the first place.

He had no idea what Ivan had even found appealing about him, much less appealing enough to camp out in front of his apartment, to put up with Alfred’s moods, to want to kiss him and take him to his fucking bedroom. Lay Alfred down on his huge, overly ornate four poster bed and go down on him like Alfred was the best damn thing he ever tasted.  

Alfred’s head fell back, a long moan escaping his lips.

“Ivan…Ivan…”

The man hummed as a sign that he heard him, moaned around Alfred’s dick and the vibrations sent a shudder of pleasure through his whole body. Alfred’s fingers, the fingers that had been caressing Ivan’s skull, his silken hair, they tightened and pulled a little.

“ _Baby,_ just…” he moaned, thought his eyes might have rolled in his head and his eyelashes fluttered closed when Ivan just did _this thing_ with his tongue and then he did it again, and _oh, that felt nice._ “I’m going to come if you keep doing that.”

There was another hum, but Ivan mercifully took Alfred out of his mouth with a lewd sounding pop. He kept moving his hand over Alfred’s dick though, applying just the right kind of pressure and twisting his wrist while at it. He looked at Alfred with an overly pleased smile tugging at his mouth, his mouth that was all wet with spit and his tongue darted out to run over his lips.

“You can come in mouth. I don’t mind swallowing.” Ivan told him with a raised eyebrow, and his voice all throaty.

“ _Shit,_ ” Alfred let out a breathless laugh, the hand that tightened in Ivan’s hair let go and his fingers migrated lower to cup the other’s cheek. Ivan nuzzled against his palm, Alfred’s heart was thundering in his chest, feeling all heavy and what-not. He ran his thumb across Ivan’s open lips. “Hey, Ivan…”

“Hmmm?”

“Kiss me.”

Ivan looked a bit surprised at the innocent request, but it made him chuckle. He surged forward and pushed Alfred back onto the bed, though he didn’t bring their mouths together like Alfred expected him to. Ivan hand, the one that had been so busy driving Alfred crazy,  left his dick, _too bad, it was missed instantly._

Ivan took Alfred’s face in both his hands, looked into his eyes, and Alfred had no idea what the other man was looking for there, what kind of emotion he  wanted to see, but whatever it was…Alfred let him. He didn’t turn, didn’t close his eyes, didn’t look anywhere else, he just looked straight into Ivan’s violet eyes and got so hopelessly lost there.

His heart was heavy and his body felt all light and tingly, his stomach was tight and he felt something bubbling in the back of his throat, some kind of emotion that he had no idea where to place, or what it was. His breath hitched, but it was good, his fingers were tightening against Ivan’s shoulders and he…he…

 _Wanted_ , just so fucking badly.

Wanted Ivan to fuck him, yeah, but wanted Ivan to crack him open and crawl between his ribs and _stay there_ and be Alfred’s.

Alfred had no idea what Ivan had wanted to see in his eyes, but he could only assume he found it. His expression got…soft, lost some of its pleased smugness. He looked serious, too serious, like there was some big emotional thing happening between them, and even if it _was…_ Alfred couldn’t stand the thought of this happening _now._ It would be too much and too overwhelming.

So Alfred grinned at him bright and happy and horny as he was, he thought it was time to use that grin that his mom called _infectious_ and hope that Ivan would be charmed by it too. Ivan didn’t smile, but he did lean down and pressed his mouth against Alfred’s grin, kissed him like Alfred was Snow White and Ivan was the prince, much too tender to have a place in _fucking,_ but might have been at home in _love making._

It crossed his mind that this might not have been a bad idea, but a _terrible_ one at that, to go through with this. But Alfred was absolutely too far gone to care, and he thought he didn’t really mind being stolen by Ivan.

 

* * *

 

 

While Ivan was in the shower, Alfred got dressed. Jeans, T-shirt, shoes. Ivan found him while he was slipping on his jacket.

“What are you doing?” The other asked, with his voice small. Alfred could detect some hurt there.

“Hmm? Oh, I’m going to get ice-cream. I’ll be right back.”

And he really didn’t listen to what the other man had to say, he was out the door and down the stairs faster than Ivan could stop him. Not that Ivan necessarily would stop him – but….

When Alfred was outside, he took a deep breath of cool night air and set out to find a shop. Because he really did want Ice-Cream, he just wasn’t convinced he was going to go back to share it with Ivan. There was this nervous energy in his whole body that really had no business being there – especially not after having sex.

People should just fall asleep after sex and leave the whole consequence/responsibility business for the morning after, but Alfred found himself bouncing around, thinking too much and feeling fucking anxious.

He wasn’t sure if he should go back – or if he should have left in the first place. The moment Ivan left the bed, Alfred had been sure that he could not just stay there until the other man returned, he had to leave even if it was just to clear his head. He always thought better when he was in motion – this wasn’t any different. He knew he had to be away from the other man – physically away from him, so he could think a bit about what he was supposed to do.

So.

His plans had stopped at _the sex_.

Now that _the sex_ was had, he had no clue how he was supposed to go forward with the Ivan situation.

Alfred told himself he’d take some time to himself, analyze his options and then decided if he was supposed to turn back or go home.

Option A: Go Home.

Run away like a scared little bitch – or a mature adult that realizes he made a mistake. He could think about it like this: it was a mistake and he was cutting his losses. Go back home, get a tiny bit drunk, enjoy the memory of it and never see Ivan again. Now everything was going to be fine, because he had got it out of his system, right? Should be better now, stop thinking about it.

Except that Alfred was now firmly convinced that the whole ‘get it out of your system’ thing only really worked when the sex was either bad or boring or somehow so disappointing that you thought about it afterwards and shuddered.  Like… _Oh my god, I never want to go back to ride that particular dick ever again_ kind of bad.

Which – truth be told, was not the case at all here, Ivan was easily the best first-time lay he ever had. And when it came to sex, things tended to just get better the longer you had sex with someone. So if the first time was good, it was bound to keep getting better.

Damnit.

It was less of a – get it out of your system kind of thing and more like giving Ivan free reign to wiggle in further into his system.

Or, there was…

Option B: Go buy some fucking ice-cream.

Or a lot of fucking ice-cream, and a bag of chips, and some coke. Stock up on snacks, cuz Ivan didn’t have any of the nice shit at his place. Alfred could then go back to him, position himself in front of Ivan’s door and say – _hey there. Scared yah, huh? I came back. I brought ice-cream_.

And sure, maybe Ivan will tell him to turn right back around and kick him out. Just because they had slept together and it had felt like magical fairy dust had been sprinkled over them as they fucked, didn’t mean that Ivan really wanted to have more to do with him than that.

But that wasn’t true, though.

Alfred knew that Ivan would greet him back with open arms and open legs.

Because Ivan had a pretty craptastic poker face, now that Alfred thought about it.

If you cracked the code and understood where to look for signs, Ivan’s feelings weren’t _that_ difficult to read. Alfred had seen it on his face – the cautious excitement and the care when they had undressed each other, the controlled eagerness when they touched and in the breathless way Ivan had smiled at him.

Alfred had looked for the signs every moment of the way – when they were kissing and touching and when they were in bed together, looked for signs that pointed towards _quick fuck_ and wrongness and didn’t see any. If he had felt any hint of being used, he would not be contemplating going back. But he hadn’t felt used and it hadn’t felt like cheap sordid affair.

Alfred was a bit torn.

Though – not really.

The issue wasn’t between what he _wanted_ to do and what he _didn’t want_ to do. It was between what he wanted to do and what he should be doing.

He _should_ be going home.

He _wanted_ to go back to Ivan.

Alfred found a convenience store and went inside. People say that you shouldn’t go grocery shopping while hungry, because you’re always bound to buy a lot of junk that seemed even mildly appealing. Well, Alfred was always fucking hungry, for him it was more like – don’t go grocery shopping while stressed out, anxious or sad, because you’re going to spend a fortune on junk food.

Arthur had flat out refused to let Alfred get free reign inside a supermarket. Kiku made lists of things they needed and stuck to them religiously. He had no idea how Ivan dealt with shopping, but that didn’t matter now, did it? Alfred _had_ free reign here, _Fuck you, Arthur_ , so he bought absolutely everything that looked even remotely interesting, along with the tried and true classics.

By the time he reached the check-out – he had soda, chocolate and candy bars, and ice-cream, and three different chips and….hmm….did Ivan have a microwave for popcorn? Well, he could buy some popcorn too. They had salt, cheese and the sweet kind of popcorn that wasn’t really that good but smelled amazing when you started popping it. And he bought cookies too.

The checkout lady didn’t say anything as she scanned the items, but Alfred though she was secretly judging him. Who buys so much shit at 12 AM? Junkies with munchies, that’s who.

If Alfred was a junkie for anything, he was a junkie for _love._ Did that make Ivan…like…heroin or something?

That made Alfred pause in the middle of the street. He chuckled.

Alfred went back to the building, to Ivan’s building, took the stairs instead of the elevator and knocked on the door instead of ringing. Ivan answered  a few seconds later, opened the door, saw Alfred sitting there bouncing on the balls of his feet and sorta…stared.

Blinked.

Alfred smirked.

Ivan’s hair was still wet, he was wearing pajama bottoms and looked so deliciously confused that Alfred wanted to just smother him in kisses.

“You…came back.”

“Yup. Let me in? I brought ice-cream!”

Alfred showed him the Tesco bag filled with junk food, waved it around proudly. Ivan took a step back, motioned for Alfred to come inside. He took the invitation, went straight towards the open space kitchen and set his midnight snack shopping on the table.

“I hope you like _Cookie Dough._ I was in the mood for _Cookie Dough,_ and I realized I never did ask what your favorite kind of ice-cream is. But…like…ice cream is ice cream, right? It’s all good. Who says no to ice-cream?” Alfred started opening random drawers until he found spoons. “Ah, bingo!” He took two of them out, placed on in Ivan’s hand.

The other man just took it, looked at the spoon like it was some foreign object he’d never seen before, even though it was Ivan’s spoon, found in Ivan’s drawer, in Ivan’s kitchen, in Ivan’s house. He had no business looking so confused at the poor eating utensils.

“And Cookie Dough is a universally beloved flavor, you know.” Alfred took out the ice-cream container out of the bag, opened it and took a spoonful for himself. It just about had the perfect consistency, still cold but slightly melty. “You don’t look like the type that’s very adventurous with food, though. I guess I can forgive that. What is your favorite type of ice-cream, though? Please don’t say Vanilla.”

“Strawberry.”

“Fine, I can work with strawberry. Here,” he took another spoonful of ice-cream, but this time he took a couple of steps forward towards Ivan and held it out to him “Wanna try some?”

“Why did you come back?” Ivan asked, and right afterwards accepted Alfred’s offered treat.

“I’ll be honest, Ivan,” he said with a shrug, “I got no clue, really. Leaving seemed too much like running away. And kinda melodramatic, in this case.”

Alfred took his ice-cream in the living room, sat his still-kinda-sore-ass down on Ivan’s fancy leather couch and set out to enjoy his treat. Sex made him hungry, maybe it lowered his blood sugar or something. That would be cool though – sex lowering blood sugar. Doctors would get to prescribe a healthy dose of orgasm to diabetics. Unless you went overboard with _the sex_ , went hypoglycemic and fainted. That was probably not so cool.

Ivan came over, set next to him on the couch, but didn’t say anything. He was just kinda…looking at Alfred, in this very intense way that made Alfred slightly uncomfortable. He needed something to break the mood.

He turned to Ivan, did his very best to look _smoldering and vampirey_ and with his best angsty and tortured voice he said,

“ _You're like my own personal brand of heroin_ ”

Ivan just looked confused. He scrunched his nose, his eyebrows frowned. Cute, much too cute.

“Thank you…?”

Alfred sighed. Disappointing.

“I take it you aren’t familiar with Twilight.”

“I take it you aren’t referring to the time of day when the sun is below the horizon?”

“Ivan. Ivan. _IVAN._ Have you lived under a rock? How can you not know what Twilight is? Like…Edward Cullen and Bella. _Team Edward,_ Ivan.”

The look of confusion and mild distaste on Ivan’s face said he was judging Alfred for his fangirl outburst. The truth is, Alfred tended to judge Alfred over his own fangirly tendencies, but he wasn’t about to be ashamed of his pubescent guilty pleasures, goddamnit. He had enough teasing about it from Mattie while they were both growing up – though Mattie was a little bitch, he always refused to admit that he enjoyed Twilight. He was just sore cuz he had been Team Jacob.

Puh-lease.

Ivan was still staring. Alfred sighed.

“Sparkly vampires, Ivan.”

“Ah! That does ring a bell.”

 _That bastard,_ he had the nerve to giggle.

“Hey, don’t diss it. I had a lot of fun with that series while growing up.”

“I’m sure you did.” He still laughed, though it wasn’t mocking. More like…fond, he was looking at Alfred fondly, with an honest to god twinkle in his eyes. Alfred felt it again, the mess of emotions swelling in his chest, behind his ribcage, bubbling up into his throat.

“Let’s watch it.”

“No.”

Okay, he’d been expecting that. But he could still push a bit.

“Come on. You don’t know what you’re missing. Plus, look at all that stuff I bought. Like…we have popcorn, and chips and chocolate…”

“It’s all bad for you. You are going to get fat if you keep eating like that.” Ivan teased, but that was a bit of a sore spot for Alfred. He had enough of wrestling with his weight when he’d been a kid, the teasing still followed him around. Alfred wasn’t _fat,_ but he just really, really liked food and had a healthy appetite.

“I am _not_ fat.”

“Fat.” Ivan said again, and pinched Alfred’s side, making him jump.

“Hey!”

“I am only teasing, _dorogoy_. I do not think you are fat, I think you are gorgeous.” Ivan told him, and _god_ , he sounded like he really meant it. Alfred took another spoonful of ice-cream, let it melt in his mouth so he didn’t have to reply to that.

“So you’ll watch Twilight with me?”

“Nyet, I am sorry, I am not doing this to myself.”

“Come on. It’s like…my teenage passion, Ivan. Don’t you want to share my teenagey passions with me?”

“I found out over the years that teenage passions rarely hold up when one is older and wiser.”

“Ivan, I let you put your giant monster dick in _my ass_. It’s still sore. There’s a law of common decency – if someone lets you put your giant monster dick in their ass, you better be grateful and watch fucking Twilight with them.” Alfred said, brandishing his spoon like a weapon and pointing it at Ivan threateningly.  He even managed to say it all with a straight face. Go Team Alfred.

Ivan looked stunned for a couple of seconds, taken aback by Alfred’s bluntness. And then he started laughing, and laughing, and Alfred started laughing too because Ivan had this rumbling laugh that came from somewhere in his chest and it made him feel warm all over.

“How are you even…? _Alfred_. Why are you so…?”

“Awesome? Amazing? Best thing to ever happen to you?”

“ _Da_ , that is one way to describe it.”

Ivan carefully took the ice-cream container and the spoon out of Alfred’s hand, placed them on the floor and then he… _pounced_. That was really the best way to describe it, like an oversized-overfed cat that was hunting a moth, pounced on Alfred and lay him flat against the couch, pressed quick, short kisses against Alfred’s laughing mouth.

“You’re heavy, you’re heavy, oh my god, Ivan, get _off_.”

“You did not complain this much before when I was on top of you.”

“That was different, you’re crushing my ribs, you’re doing this on purpose!” But Alfred was still laughing, trying to half-heartedly to push Ivan off of him. He swore the man got heavier still.

Ivan just giggled, leaned his head against the curve of Alfred’s shoulder and snuggled against him. Alfred put his arms instinctively around his shoulders.

It was strange to cuddle with someone like Ivan in this position. All of Alfred’s other partners, they had been shorter and leaner, and Alfred always found himself in the position of holding them against his chest, running his fingers through their hair, feeling their breath against his neck. He never really imagined holding Ivan like this, because the man was just so damn big. But it was nice, that Ivan liked to cuddle.

He really was perfect for Alfred.

Well.

Almost.

“So…Twilight?”

Ivan gave an exaggerated sigh, like he was about to take a huge hit to his pride.

“I supposed I have to, don’t I? Be grateful and watch….” He paused, for dramatic effect, probably, “ _fucking Twilight_?”

Alfred couldn’t help himself, he laughed. Kissed Ivan. Again.

So – not almost.

Absolutely fucking perfect.

 

* * *

 

 

The thing is – Alfred had decided he was going to call things off with Ivan before Natalya came to his studio that faithful afternoon.

Not because he didn’t love Ivan, but because he did, he loved him, loved him a lot. Loved him enough so be able to close his eyes and imagine _things._

Imagine a life with him, a real life, not playing house here and there when Ivan had time to spare, not making himself crazy with longing all the times in between.

But a real life, with the whole picket fence she-bang, with pets in the yard, and a flower garden, and fucking children. He could imagine family and shit, and decorating Christmas trees and Thanksgiving turkey and driving each other mad while grocery  shopping, arguing over whose turn was it to do the laundry or wash the dishes.

All those couple things, all those family things that Alfred always knew he wanted, he realized at some startling point that his stupid, traitorous little southern bell of a heart wanted them with Ivan, out of all people. But Ivan couldn’t give them, because he was married.

And he thought about breaking things off with Ivan because of that, and _decided_ he was going to do it when he realized that Ivan….might have wanted them too, if things had been different.

It went like this –

Ivan was with him, in the little apartment that Alfred was living in after he moved out of Kiku’s. Ivan had a few more hours until he had to be at the airport, but chose to spend that time with Alfred.

Alfred was watering the plants, when a thought crossed his head and couldn’t hold his tongue enough, couldn’t stop himself from asking –

“Did you ever think about having kids?” Ivan blinked, looked startled at the question.

“Yes. I suppose Natalya and I will have to produce children at some point. Though she has always been very vocal about not wanting to give birth, I assume we could always use a surrogate.”

“Oh.”

“Hmmmm.”

Should have left it at that.

But he couldn’t so he had to push.

“But that’s not what I asked, not really, you know? I mean – have you ever thought about having children, independently from _family duty_ and responsibility and all the other stuff.” He took a breath before continuing, “Like, do you want kids? Do you like kids?”

Ivan looked torn about how to answer that. Alfred let him sit there in silence for a few minutes, and then the silence kept getting longer. So he decided to start talking.

“I’ve always loved kids, you know. I want a whole bunch of them _when I grow up”_ he said with a laugh. “I think, if I were a girl, I probably would have found some crazy bastard to knock me up already. Or…you know. If I didn’t have the whole gay thing going against me, I probably would have had children until now.”

Ivan didn’t say anything, and Alfred thought he would just be silently stewing over there, but…he did talk, eventually.

“I think you would be a wonderful father, Alfred.”

“Damn straight I would be. I’d have a fucking army of spoiled brats, and they’d be _amazing._ I’d be that kind of annoying parent that takes pictures of their kids every moment of their lives and posts all of them on facebook with annoying captions, everyone in my friend’s list would _hate me._ ”

“I never thought about what kind of father I would be.”

“I think you’d be a great dad, you know? You’d probably be one of those momma bear types, that fusses over every little bruise and scratch. Probably want to keep the poor little demons in all day, dress them up in bubble wrap so they’re all safe, all the time. We would….”

And then he stopped.

Sucked in a breath.

Ivan was sitting absolutely still, he didn’t even breath, didn’t blink, just stared at Alfred.

Because they both caught it, caught it and understood it, ‘ _we would…_ ’ hanging in the air between them like a death sentence.

It took Alfred about ten seconds to – come to terms with it, understand why he said he, get mortified by it, kill any form of emotion coming from it, slap a smile on his face and turn back to Ivan like nothing had happened.

But the damage had been done.

“Sorry,” he said, with a grin that hurt his cheeks, “Dunno what I wanted to say there.”

“No. No, you knew what you wanted to say” Ivan countered sharply. He got up from where he was sitting, crossed the room and positioned himself in front of Alfred in a couple of strides. One hand, he put on Alfred’s shoulder to keep him place, the other on his chin to force eye contact.

“Ivan.”

“Don’t. Keep going.”

“No, it’s stupid. Just let it go.” Ivan leaned forward, let their foreheads rest against each other, their noses touching, sharing breath.

“Finish what you wanted to say. Please.” And Ivan rarely sounded that pleading, and Alfred was never the one to deny him.

“We would argue about it a lot. And you’d want to teach them Russian. And I’d watch superheroes movies with them. And you’d fuss a lot about where they’d be going to school and….and….I don’t know. Shit, Ivan, I think we’d be happy, and they’d be happy and I _really_ don’t want to talk about this.”

Ivan did not say anything at that, he just pressed his mouth to Alfred, kissing him deeply. Alfred let himself be kissed, let Ivan ravish his mouth for a second too long, before breaking away from him. He took a deep breath to steady himself again – god, this shit was _painful_.

Like really painful, like punch-to-the-nuts kind of painful, only it was in his chest and not his balls.

He looked at Ivan over his shoulder, saw that the Russian had not moved from where Alfred had left him. He was looking at the potted sunflowers that Alfred had on the windowsill, touching petals absent mindedly and Alfred wished, not for the first time, the X-Men were real and so was telepathy, that he could rival Charles Xavier and get a glimpse into Ivan’s skull to see what was there.

With his luck, though, he could acquire Xavier style superpowers tomorrow and find out that the Russian had some sort of Magneto helmet, only built into his skull. Like super soviet villain powers – attract unwitting American heroes and then become wholly unattainable.

But that wasn’t something that could change soon. Ivan was married and with a whole host of family responsibilities. It wasn’t like he could just divorce Natalya and everything would be better after that – the issues that led to their marriage in the first place would still fucking be there.

Sure – his Dad was dead, but there was still a whole host of people that took issue with Ivan in the first place. A scandal – a big _gay_ scandal, more so than anything else would a nice excuse to cause problems, right?

Alfred thought about it – if Ivan would become available tomorrow – what would he do? Well, probably jump him, kiss him, and immediately demand that Ivan tattooed “PROPERTY OF ALFRED F. JONES” right across his forehead. That way he could rest assured that no one ever looked Ivan’s way ever again, and he didn’t ever have to feel this way anymore.

Alfred never thought of himself as a possessive man – he was all about letting people make their own choices, giving them as much freedom as possible, none of that – _You belong to me, you are mine_ bullshit.

But sometimes he wanted to wrap Ivan up in a blanket and hide him under his bed, make sure he stayed there and never ever left. Alfred could feed him ice-cream and fries and give him vodka through a straw.

Then Ivan would be his and he wouldn’t have to worry about sharing him with someone else, about sneaking around and about having to keep their relationship a secret. Then he could tell everyone that he was a taken man _, yeah, sure, we’re going steady, we got a house together and a puppy and we’re looking to adopt._

But if Ivan did become available tomorrow – the truth is that nothing much would change, would it? It’s what Alfred kept telling himself. It’s not like Ivan would take him to Moscow, put a ring on it and show him off to his friends and family and co-workers. Fucking Vogue spreadsheet and all.

Ivan’s dead father made sure no one would find out his son was gay, so he married him off to Natalya. If Ivan had wanted to go against his wishes, he would have done it a long time ago.

Alfred – for all that he knew himself to be a swell guy and all, and he knew that Ivan cared about him, but he wasn’t going to fool himself into thinking he was worth more than the Braginsky empire, or that Ivan loved him so foolishly and stupidly that he’d give up everything his family ever worked for just for the chance to be with Alfred.

That was crazy talk.

Alfred didn’t want or need a partner with the amount of money that Ivan had. There was rich – and then there was _rich_ and Ivan was definitely the second one. That sort of money was something out of this world for him, too much and too in your face and Alfred only really wanted Ivan to stay with him in his little London apartment and live there happily ever after, like any other boring old domestic couple.

He didn’t want the glitz and glamour. He didn’t even like caviar, for fuck’s sakes! He’d tried it at Ivan’s insistence, hated to texture, never tried it again.

He had no business in Ivan’s world.

So he let Ivan leave with a heavy heart, knowing for a fact that this couldn’t go on any longer.

Something had to give.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter starts with a disclaimer - 
> 
> This story is a long way from being done. I have a lot more of it planned out, so regardless of what happens in this chapter, please know that there's still a lot of it that's already written or at least planned out. We're not even close to the end, so bear with me here. XD I am also a very firm believer in "earn your happy ending through character development and Getting-thy-shit-together". I think it's clear that both Ivan and Alfred need a good dose of all that getting-thy-shit-together juice. 
> 
> That being said - I'll let you get on with the reading.

Knowing you had to do something wasn’t the same thing as actually having the balls to do it.

See – Alfred _knew_ he had to break up with Ivan. He just didn’t have the balls to do it.

He’d known for _months._ It was just some random bit of information that was casually hanging out in the back of his head, and he was avoiding it like the plague. Whenever he stumbled across it, he just hid it further and ignored it.

Until he couldn’t ignore it anymore.

Natalya – naked, angry, beautiful Natalya – sitting in front of him, hurling insults, eyes full of self-righteous fury, that was the point in which he realized he couldn’t ignore it anymore. His heart couldn’t ignore it anymore either, because each time Ivan came to him, it was more and more painful to let him go.

Alfred wanted to _keep_ him, it wasn’t fair that he always had to let him go.

But then again – he had known this would happen. Had been preparing for the pain of losing Ivan for a while. Preparing for pain is not the same as experiencing it, though.

After Natalya left his studio that afternoon, Alfred had raged and cried and cursed everything and everyone, every damn decision he ever made that led him to… _this._

To Ivan – who was sweet, and cute, and fucked like a god, and binge-watched Game of Thrones with Alfred before season six came out even though he had never been interested in it in the first place. Ivan that teased him and made fun of him, but indulged Alfred’s whims and fancies. Ivan that liked motherfucking strawberry ice-cream, though he’d never once asked Alfred to buy it for him, and he always drank about half of Alfred’s Starbucks order but refused to admit he enjoyed it.

For Alfred’s 26th birthday, Ivan had sorta kinda kidnapped him, made him get on a plane and took him to a part of the US that Alfred had never really planned on visiting – Alaska.

Alfred had never really associated Alaska with anything remotely particularly romantic, _but_ …

Picture this – Alaska in July. Walking side by side with Ivan down the banks of the Chena in Fairbanks. In the middle of the night, when it was supposed to be pitch black but it was really pinky-orange. People were out, but it couldn’t hold a candle to the hustle and bustle you saw in other places, light years away from London. And no one had any idea who they were, and Alfred had never been here, Ivan had apparently never been here.

It was a completely new place in which they could walk around hand in hand and Alfred could imagine that life would have been like this, if him and Ivan were officially together.

…yeah, it had been pretty darn romantic.

“I would have wanted to take you to Saint Petersburg. There’s no place like Saint Petersburg to experience the Midnight Sun. It’s so beautiful there – the sky is bright long after midnight, and I could have taken you in a boat down the Fontanka Canal, then down the Neva, to see some of the islands. And then there’s the festival – the White Nights Festival. Everything comes alive during the Festival, and there’s people coming from all over Russia. You have street artists everywhere, and historical reenactments, fireworks. That’s always an experience and…”

Ivan had had this bright, animated look on his face while talking about it, but then he turned to look at Alfred and something on his face had changed. His eyes had softened, his smile had turned a bit sad.

“I think you would love it. No – I am sure you would love it and I would so much wanted to show you Saint Petersburg.”

There had been just so much longing in his voice, and you’re not supposed to be longing someone that was in arm’s reach to you. So Alfred had cut Ivan off with a kiss, didn’t want to hear him speak anymore about all the things Ivan wanted to show him. Saint Petersburg during the Festival. The Hermitage and the Peter and Paul Cathedral. And the house where Ivan spent his summers as a child, because Alfred knew that his mother had been front Saint Petersburg and had insisted on spending long periods of time there with her son.

 And Alfred wanted to see it too – never expected to feel a longing to visit Russia out of all places. But it wasn’t a longing for the _sights,_ more like longing to see where Ivan came from, to see where the other man had grown up and the places that shaped him. A longing to be find himself firmly placed in the other’s life and for the things that could have happened, if circumstances had been different.

“Next time, okay? Take me there time.” Alfred had said against his mouth, grinning and happy and very much fixed into the present.

Because there wasn’t going to be a next time, couldn’t be a next time. Alfred was damn sure another year of this would kill him, all the whiplash of emotions couldn’t be good for his blood pressure.

And if Alfred wanted to stick to his general plan of having…like…a family, and kids of his own…

He couldn’t have that with Ivan. He couldn’t really have anything with Ivan, apart from the moments both of them stole out of each other. It wasn’t meant to last, it had been a wonder it lasted as long as it had already.

For reference, Alfred liked to think of his relationship with Ivan like a pause. Like putting life on pause, responsibilities and future plans, indulge in the now and leave to consequences for later. But it was already later – two years later, to be precise, and he had hoped this affair would have run its course by now, that him and Ivan would get tired of each other, bored, anything other than this uncertain happiness of _the now_.

 

* * *

 

It was precisely one week after Natalya’s visit that Ivan showed up.

Alfred was expecting him, though when then man knocked, it was like he was knocking against Alfred’s skull too.

He was so, so _hung-over_.

Knowing that Ivan was supposed to come over, Alfred had overindulged in his own little pity party a night before.

He was really determined to break things off with Ivan.

Yup.

Gonna do it. Gotta do it.

Alfred crawled out of bed – he was miserable mess with a raging head ache, and went to open the door for Ivan. The other man didn’t even say hello, didn’t give Alfred a chance to say anything, he took his face in his big, warm hands and kissed Alfred for all he was worth, kissed like you kissed in the airport, like soldiers kissed when they came back from war, like all the kisses they missed were meant to be encompassed in it.

Alfred’s knees went a bit weak, his stomach was full of lead.

He’d thought that when Ivan came, he could ask him to go out for lunch. He hadn’t wanted to give the other the opportunity to lure him in with kisses and touches. It would have been easier to just go out, have lunch, let Ivan know that he had no intention of continuing their affair. Then Alfred had imagined getting up, leaving Ivan at the restaurant and going over to Kiku’s place so he could lick his wounds in peace in the company of his friend.

He didn’t want to do it _here_ , where they had been together so many times and he had so many nice memories.

But whatever – he could work with this too, if he had to.

Ivan kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him, and his hand were running over Alfred’s body.  Alfred kissed back, just as eager, maybe more so. Ivan thought it was just another visit, Alfred knew it was the _last_ visit so he had to make special. He dragged Ivan with him into his bedroom. Pushed Ivan against the bed and went down on him. Pressed his face and his nose against the soft, dark blond hair Ivan had there. Sucked him off until the other came in his mouth – and Alfred took a second to memorize the taste of him on his tongue and then just kept on sucking gently until Ivan started to get hard again in his mouth.

Then he just took off his pants and boxers, got out the lube and put some on Ivan, straddled his hips and sat down on his cock. That hurt. Like…really hurt, so he had to give himself a couple of seconds to breath and get used to it. Ivan got up on his elbows, put a hand against Alfred thigh and made rubbed gentle circles around it.

“Shh, shh, dorogoy. _Relax_. What is it with you today?” Alfred didn’t respond, grabbed Ivan by the back of his neck and pulled him forward slightly. Pressed a kiss against him mouth.

“It’s okay,” he answered breathlessly, “I’m okay.” He kissed Ivan again, deemed that he was good enough to start moving, rolled his hips gently and both of them gasped at that. There was confusion mixed with the pleasure on Ivan’s face, he was looking at Alfred with his pupils all blown up and his eyes half-lidded, kept a hand on Alfred’s hip.

Between the friction and the heat and the fullness and the pain, Alfred grinned at him and said - 

“Hey - hello. Didn’t say hello.”

“How rude. Hello.” Ivan gave his breathy half-chuckle-half-moan and let himself fall against the bed sheets.

Alfred was used enough to the sensation to start riding Ivan in earnest, did so until his thighs were burning with the effort and his stomach was tight with the need to come. When that was done, he gave both of them about twenty minutes time-out, until he grabbed Ivan by his shoulder, pulled him on top and put his legs around the other’s waist, pull him close and told him to fuck him like that too.

He wanted Ivan to be really close the second time they fucked, so they could touch all over, and Alfred could kiss him and look at his face and kinda take him in again, all the little details he didn’t want to miss. Like all the shades of violet in his eyes that got dark when he was turned on, how his nostrils flared when he inhaled, the lines on his lips and the face he made when he came inside Alfred.

God, he was so gonna miss Ivan.

Whenever Ivan wanted to stop, Alfred kept pulling him back to bed, clung to him and kissed him and licked him all over, touched him so he could memorize how Ivan felt against him. Alfred couldn’t really get enough of him, he just wanted to keep Ivan there in a little cozy bubble and sex and love and fluff.

They were adults, though, and sadly only human. After the fifth time they had sex, Alfred when to the bathroom and when he came back, he found Ivan fast asleep on his bed – so crawled into bed with him, cuddled up to Ivan and refused to close his eyes.

 

* * *

 

 

When Ivan got up the morning, he found Alfred in the kitchen. He’d made coffee already, and offered it to Ivan. Offered pancakes for breakfast and all, but when Ivan tried to kiss him, Alfred shied away from him. He couldn’t mask as anything other than it was -  a flinch and half a step back, and it was accompanied by a pang in his chest.

Ivan caught it, and Alfred saw the exact moment his features turned from sleepy and relaxed to alert and on edge. Something was wrong and Ivan knew it was wrong.

“Alfred?”

“Hmmm?”

“What is it with you? You are acting very strange. Not that yesterday wasn’t pleasant, but you’re never that…” Ivan trailed off.

Not horny, Alfred hadn’t even been that horny yesterday. The word that Ivan was looking for was needy, Alfred had felt needy and clingy.

Now there was no avoiding the issue, so Alfred took a deep breath and steeled himself for what was about to come.

“Ivan, can you please seat down? We need to talk.” Ivan looked at him strangely, but sat down anyways. Alfred started pacing.

“I am sitting, Alfred. Can you please tell me what’s wrong now?”

Alfred took willed his lips and tongue and throat to move, decidedly didn’t think too much about what he was about to say. Looked somewhere above Ivan’s head as he said.

“I think…” Then he stopped and shook his head. “No – not think. ‘I think -’ implies that I’m not sure and there’s room for negotiating. There’s no room for negotiating in this, I made up my mind, you know? And I know I have to, so there’s no going back and I…”

“Alfred, calm down, no negotiating _what_?”

“We need to stop. Break up. We need to break up.”

Silence. Dead silence.

“ _What_?”

“You heard me, baby.”  Alfred hated, hated the fact that his voice sounded so soft. He stopped pacing and finally looked at Ivan, the other man looked as if he had been punched.

“I…” Ivan wet his lips. Alfred really wanted to kiss him, say, _fooled yah, nah, we aint breakig up, baby._ But he couldn’t do that. “ _Why_?”

And Alfred really had no words for the things he was feeling, for the things he felt when he heard Ivan’s voice like _that._

What was he supposed to answer?

_Because your wife found me, came to my studio and told me to stop._

_Because you’re married._

_Because I want a family, someone to spend my whole life with._

_Because I love you, I love you so much and it hurts to be with you._

_Because I think you’re perfect, I think you’re the love of my life, but I’m not supposed to be part of yours._

It was all that, but he couldn’t say any of it. He hoped that, apart from the first reason, Ivan knew all of the others. Could understand.

“Because I…I can’t to do this anymore Ivan.” He settled on the simple, the conclusion to all the reason mentioned above. “I’m sorry” Ivan looked pained, and didn’t say anything.

Didn’t say anything for a long time.

Alfred didn’t know what he was expecting. Yelling? Anger? There really wasn’t any of that between them at the moment. Just a whole lot of sadness, and he thought that Ivan understood. Ivan really had no right to be angry at Alfred in this, just like Alfred had no right to be angry at Natalya.

“I was…waiting for this to happen. I supposed it should have happened a long time ago, da?”

“Yeah, baby, it should have.” Alfred said with a said little laugh, “For what it’s worth though, I don’t regret it. That we let it go on for long.”

“Neither do it.”

Ivan got up from where he was sitting, took a step towards Alfred. He expertly avoided him, didn’t want to let the other man kiss him. Alfred had already kissed his goodbyes into Ivan’s mouth and skin the night before, anything more than that would make be redundant at this point. Ivan looked hurt – more _hurt_ , how was that even possible? – by Alfred’s reluctance, though he just stood there. Both of them looked at each other, Alfred trying very hard not to think about how Ivan’s face was sad and pained, when the other swallowed thickly.

“Alfred, I love -”

“Yeah. I know.”

He didn’t let Ivan _say_ properly, not now out of all moments. Between them, _I love you_ was the one thing that never ever _ever_ got said. Not because it wasn’t felt – because it was, and both of them knew it, but it wasn’t said because there’s just some things you don’t say when it comes to affairs and lovers. You don’t tell them you love, even if it’s true.

And Alfred didn’t want to hear it, really didn’t want to hear it. If there was one damn thing that could possibly make his resolve falter, that was it.

“I supposed I should be leaving now.” Ivan went to pick up his bag and then came back around, put himself in front of Alfred. They weren’t touching, but they were so close to each other.

Alfred’s fingers were itching to grab hold of Ivan’s hand and close the distance between them. He didn’t, that would be bad.

Really, really bad.

For once, he actually listened to his own advice, didn’t touch Ivan, didn’t reach out to him. Just willed himself to sit perfectly still, while feeling Ivan’s gaze like a caress across his features. Then, Ivan leaned forward, Alfred expected a kiss to his mouth that he’d had to doge again, but it wasn’t that – just forehead pressing against each other, Ivan breathing him in then exhaling against Alfred’s mouth.

Alfred’s whole body felt like he wasn’t his own, like he was floating a bit above whole thing and seeing two strangers say goodbye to each other. He would have been really sad to see it in a movie, such a shame, they loved each other, but _gasp_! Responsibilities! Real life!

Could have been a nice Holywood movie with nice bittersweet ending –  a ‘ _We’ll always have Paris’_ -kinda deal. You know the characters will be alright, even if they had to be apart. Then years later they see each other in the airport by chance, eyes meeting across the room and then the credits roll.

And you’re left a little sad, but ultimately satisfied.

This wasn’t like that though – this fucking sucked. It wasn’t a movie and he couldn’t montage a timeskips of healing activities or however the hell that shit worked in movies. He had never been much into dramas. What he did know was that this sucked and it would suck for a long time, and sure, he’d likely end up being okay, but until them?

His breath hitched. Ivan cupped one of his cheeks in his hand and pressed their mouths together, suddenly and forcefully, so fast that it was done before Alfred had any chance to protest or push him aside or give into it.

And then he left.

Just turned around, left the kitchen, left the apartment, door slamming shut behind him, and Alfred was still sorta sitting there, staring at the place Ivan just vacated.

Alfred let out a shuddering breath.

There was a knot of tears that he could feel perched somewhere in his chest, something that wanted to be let out, but no way was he going to give into it.

But he had no idea how…what…

He wasn’t used to this.

He was so not used to this, how to you deal with breaking up with someone you love? Someone that didn’t hurt you willingly, that you love and they love you and you were _so happy_ for the amount of time you had together and how how how are you supposed to…

Though he had been heartbroken before, but it didn’t even compare to…ugh.

Because Alfred never broke up with someone like this. It always felt justified to break up with them, regardless of what it was about. This was arguably the most justifiable break up he’d had, though, but…

He _loved_ Ivan.

And Ivan loved him.

So essentially, Alfred got a 2-for-1 deal on heartbreaking today. Should get an achievement for that.

 

 

* * *

 

 

After Natalya’s visit to Alfred’s studio, after he had decided to break things off with Ivan, after Kiku became worried enough about Alfred’s mental health and his all-around demeanor, the Japanese man probably decided that Alfred had had enough of mopping around and he needed to step up and help his friend get his groove back.

Alfred couldn’t really disagree with him.

Life kinda sucked balls without Ivan.

And I mean – you know it’s bad when your semi-reclusive, two-steps-away-from-being-a-Hiki-NEET, hentai-game-developing friend says you need to get out more.

 Alfred agreed.

He needed to get out more.

He also needed a reason to shower.

So the two of them set off on what Alfred called a friendship montage – had adult sleep overs that featured Japanese horror movies, got up to date with the latest anime releases, played Broforce and Gungeon on co-op mode. He even got Kiku to go on a tour-de-force through the London street food scene, spent a whole weekend testing out various food trucks and indulging in copious amounts of calories and fried stuff.

Kiku let him go wild with ice-cream and cupcakes and cake-pop and cheese-cake-on-a-stick. He even let Alfred convince him into sharing a peanut butter smores brownie with him.

 It took a lot of convincing.  

Instead of making him feel better though, it only made Alfred think about Ivan. Ivan that always grumbled about Alfred’s sweet-tooth, but always shared stuff with him. And the whole peanut-butter-chocolate combination was also one of Ivan’s favorites, as they had discovered together.

An image of Ivan’s eyes going a bit wide with sugary pleasure flashed in his mind’s eye. Ivan had kept insisting that he didn’t _like_ chocolate, that peanut butter smelled like rat droppings and there’s no way in hell that was a good combination, _Alfred you are a tasteless peasant._

Well, Ivan hadn’t really called him a tasteless peasant, but he had put on a whole show about being really, really reluctant to try new stuff with Alfred. Especially since it was something he considered _too American._ But! But! After some poking and prodding at the topic, Alfred had managed to bully Ivan into sharing a peanut-butter-chocolate cupcake with him.  

The thing about Ivan was that a lot of times, he put a good show about _not wanting to do something,_ but Alfred had known the other man was too charmed by his boyish good looks and his puppy eyes. Alfred had taken advantage of Ivan’s fondness of him more times than he liked to admit. The peanut-butter-chocolate cupcake moment was just one of many.

Alfred had presented the cupcake proudly to him, in all it’s heavy-on-the-frosting-and-sprinkles glory. It had been a very nice looking cupcake, it even had mini-Reese peanut butter cups on it. Ivan had eyed the thing like it was about to explode, but a bite out of the cupcake had been taken, and then another one, and another one. There had been no sharing that particular cupcake, Alfred had let Ivan have it all because it was just too _cute_ to see him get frosting on his face. No experience with eating the jumbo sizes, didn’t know how to work around the frosting.

“It’s really good, isn’t it? It is, I know it is. Admit it.” Alfred had goaded him.

Ivan had frowned at him, there was even a little stuck-up huff added there, but the effect had been completely ruined by the fact that there had been peanut-butter frosting on his nose. In Ivan’s defense, when you had a nose like that, it tended to get in the way of things.

Kiku’s voice cut through the memory and brought Alfred back into the present. He blinked.

“Sorry Keeks, what were you saying?”

“I was…” Kiku looked at him as if Alfred had suddenly been possessed. If they had been in a show, they would have been in one of the first seasons of _Supernatural_. The random characters in the beginning of an episode – Alfred getting possessed by a demon, Kiku sensing something was wrong. “Alfred, I was asking if you don’t want more of the brownie. You barely touched it.”

Alfred looked at the poor brownie sitting between them. It had done nothing wrong, but Alfred didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. So he sighed, set down his spoon and told Kiku the words that made the sky come tumbling down.

“No, thanks, Keeks. You can have it. I’m really not in the mood to it eat anymore.”

Kiku’s spoon dropped out of his hand, his jaw came unhinged. Kiku _stared._

It was unthinkable! Alfred – Alfred, his Alfred, to refuse…food? To refuse a brownie! A perfectly good brownie! Not in the mood? It was like Naruto deciding Sasuke wasn’t worth the effort, like Goku giving up. Alfred didn’t turn down _food_ , it was like all the world suddenly halted and Kiku had been transported into a weird mirror verse.

Clearly – it wasn’t Alfred.

Or it was. But it was Alfred being _sad_.

Kiku sighed. This was not acceptable. Something had to be done.

 

* * *

 

 

Hanging out with Kiku made Alfred feel a little better. It was also nice because the other man said he wanted to go up to see Alfred’s place, sit a bit more with him. And yeah – sure, Alfred could use the company. His place was kinda lonely as it was.

Alfred led Kiku up the stairs, opened the door to him and motioned for Kiku to step inside. They got their slippers, Alfred pulled out the PS4 and the controllers. It was like they were room-mates again, transported back in time to the months right after Alfred had broken up with Arthur and before he had met Ivan.

 Sometimes later, a couple of beers and some Mortal Kombat later, Kiku turned to him and said, out of the blue.

“Alfred - please do not think I am judging you for the way you’re living but…” Kiku’s hands motioned uselessly around the place.

Alfred’s house was kind of a mess. Alfred knew that.

In his natural state, he wasn’t really the most orderly person, though he’d never really liked living in a pig-sty. Still though – while he had lived with Kiku, the two of them had a weekly schedule of cleaning up, tidying up and doing the laundry. After Alfred moved out and got his own place, he kept it relatively clean. Mostly because it was pretty usual for Ivan to drop in with little warning beforehand, even if it was just for a night.

He hadn’t wanted Ivan to think he was a total, absolute mess, so he kept his shit in order. Didn’t leave his clothes strewn all over the place. Folded the laundry after it was dry. Watered the plants – managed to keep them alive and thriving, by some weird twist of fate. Did grocery shopping for actual food, had ingredients that could be cooked and prepared, not just the ready made stuff.

Alfred was okay with the ready made stuff. Ivan hadn’t been, so Alfred made sure to stock up on shit so that they could actually cook together and god fucking damnit, he really fucking shot himself in the foot, hadn’t he?

The first rule of an affair – you don’t talk about the affair.

The second rule of an affair – you don’t start playing house together, because it’s gonna bite you in the ass. 

So when Kiku scolded-him-but-not-really about the state of his apartment, Alfred didn’t have enough energy to argue with him or say that there was no point in keeping the place clean. He wasn’t expecting other guests he had to impress, Kiku could deal with it, if Mattie decided out of the blue that he wanted to take a magical spontaneous trip to London, he could deal with it too.

It’s not like he was depressed or something – he was just…kinda bummed.

Really bummed.

He shrugged his shoulders, didn’t argue with Kiku.

“Yeah, I know.” And he didn’t elaborate on it either.

Kiku looked just about ready to cry, Alfred thought that was definitely an overreaction. Just because Alfred didn’t want a brownie and didn’t feel defending his choice about something with Kiku….

So – that was probably the moment in which Kiku decided that he needed reinforcements to get Alfred out of his funk.

 

* * *

 

 

Reinforcement came to in the form of the happy little Italian named Feliciano Vargas.

Of course it was Feliciano.

Alfred couldn’t really imagine Kiku calling the other man and asking for help explicitly. Maybe he called him up, asked a couple of questions, listened to Feliciano talk about how Ludwig was the best thing since sliced bread and how lonely he was now that his Grandpa had died and Lovino moved back to Sicily. Whatever it had been, Alfred definitely smelled Kiku’s involvement in the whole thing when he saw Feliciano’s name flashing across his phone.

Or maybe he was wrong about Kiku’s scheming, and Feliciano had called on his own free will. That was a possibility too.

Regardless of what it was– Feliciano called Alfred out of the blue, apologized for not keeping in touch lately.

By this point, the two Italian brothers were no longer living on the other side of the hallway from Kiku’s apartment. Their Grandpa had died months ago and Lovino moved back to Sicily temporarily to ‘ _take care of some business’_. Feliciano had started living with Ludwig.

Then, Ludwig had asked Feliciano to marry him. He saw it on facebook.

Alfred was _not_ jealous.

Kiku and Alfred were invited over at their place for dinner. Alfred wasn’t really a masochist, so going to have dinner with your recently engaged couple-friends that were living together and happily thriving a few weeks after having to let go of the love of your life…eh. It wasn’t really something he wanted to do.

He tried to wiggle out of it, honestly he did.

“But Alfred – I’ll make pasta.”

Alfred paused. Considered.

“What kind of pasta?”

“Veal Bolognese, of course.”

Shit, Feliciano’s veal Bolognese was to die for. Alfred had yet to find any restaurant that did it better. The Vargas Restaurant was amazing, for sure, but only with Feliciano in the kitchen did the Bolognese taste like the angels had blessed it.

“Well, maybe, I could drop by a little…”

“I’ll make dessert to.”

“Tiramisu?”

“ _And_ Semi-Freddo”

Saying no to brownies was one thing.

But not even Alfred was heartbroken enough to refuse an invitation for Bolognese, Tiramisu _and_ Semi-Freddo, all made by Feliciano Vargas. He was only human.

Kiku and him became really good friends with Feliciano while they lived across from each other. Alfred had a major culinary crush on Felicano, which the other man had nurtured extensively. When they were still neighbors and Feliciano would come back from his shift at the restaurant, he used to bring Alfred and Kiku take-over boxes with food and left-over desserts. And even if he didn’t have a restaurant shift, Feliciano still tended to go overboard with the cooking, so he either invited them over for dinner often or brought them left-overs.

Good Bless Italians, they glorious cooking and their inability to cook for anything less than an army.

So on Friday evening, Alfred and Kiku met up again and went to visit the happy German-Italian domestic alliance.

“Ve~Alfred, Kiku! It’s so nice to see you again.” Feliciano greeted them with the traditional hug and cheek-kisses. “Please come in. The food is almost ready.”

They had one of those nice open space kitchens, so the entire apartment smelled of scrumptious, delicious food. It made Alfred’s mouth water. The open space kitchen meant that one of the first sights they were greeted with when they stepped inside was Ludwig, with the sleeves of his shirt rolled to his elbows, pristine white chef’s apron on, stirring in a huge pot of bubbling red sauce.

“Alfred, Kiku. Hello.” The German man raised one hand in greeting, the other kept his steady clockwise movement inside the pot.

“Hey Ludwig, how yah doin’?” Alfred called out to him cheerfully.

He liked Ludwig, the man was all prim and proper and orderly, but because of him, Feliciano had always kept fancy German beer around and always offered it Alfred. Feliciano had explained that he was a wine drinker – Alfred was okay with wine, sure, had nothing against it, but if beer was available, he’d rather have beer.

All in all, it was a pleasant evening. Had some Paulaner, ate two servings of pasta and a double dose of dessert. Listened to Feliciano and Ludwig’s plans about moving.

“You’re moving? Moving where?” Kiku had asked.

“Frankfurt, of course.” Ludwig supplied. “I have a very good friend there that I met in college. He’s a architect and wants to open his open his own firm. Sadik is an extraordinarily good architect, but not much of a businessman.” Ludwig paused a second, took a sip of his beer and continued with a slight frown on his face. “Sadik is also Turkish. He’s been living in Frankfurt for seventeen years, but his German still has bit of an accent.”

“Do people refuse to work with him because of that?” Ludwig shrugged, though there was still a displeased frown on his face.

“Not outright. But as Sadik himself put it – there are still people that are uncomfortable with the idea of negotiating and signing contracts with immigrants, or offer them less money for the same work. And Sadik always had a short temper, so he generally prefers not to deal with that sort of….”

“Bullshit?” Alfred supplied helpfully.

“That is one way of putting it, yes. He asked me if I was interested in helping him set up his firm, take over the business side – negotiate contracts, deal with lawyers, monitor the revenue, while he works on the projects.”

“That sounds very interesting, Ludwig.” Kiku supplied. “I trust you are excited about the opportunity to start a business venture together with a friend, no?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Ve~ I’ve started learning German. It’s really _hard_ , because the grammar is all over the place and it’s so different from Italian, and the words are all so long, did you know you can just glue as many words possible together to form one really big work? So confusing. And capital letters in the middle of them _sentence_. But Ludwig has been great help!”

Feliciano was excitedly explaining them his struggles with learning German and how much of a help Ludwig was in the process. The blond man didn’t say anything, but got this little dusting of pink across the bridge of his nose. It was kinda cute, a big burly manly man like Ludwig getting all embarrassed by his fiancé’s praises.

It made Alfred smile, and he probably could have helped Ludwig out a bit, skew the topic in a different direction. Kiku was most likely already contemplating doing exactly that. Alfred wasn’t gonna extend him that mercy though – as far as Alfred saw the situation, Ludwig was happily engaged, ready to start a new career with alongside an old friend, got to eat Feliciano’s heavenly cooking all the damn time. Things were good for him, he could handle some embarrassment for the sake of Alfred’s amusement.

“So how does Ludwig help you out with learning German, Feli?”

“We’re watching all these movies in German! We watched something called _Kleines Arschloch”_

“Feliciano, I do not know much German, but isn’t that translated to…Tiny…erm…” Kiku was too polite to say bad words, so Feliciano helped him out.

“Asshole! Yes. Tiny Asshole.”

“It’s a cult classic German animation.” Ludwig commented seriously, but Alfred was already making a mental note about googling that.  Cult Classic German animation about tiny assholes. It was probably disappointingly harmless, but – whenever you said classic animations, Alfred instantly thought about Disney and cute critters of the forest singing happy songs. Now that Ludwig said classic German animation AND it was called Tiny Asshole – Alfred had a certain imagine in his head.

“And Ludwig also got me into listening German music - ”

“Feliciano, I don’t think that’s…”

“…At first, I didn’t like it much. Ludwig has this big collection of music with angry men singing about cannibalism and incest…”

“I told you what _Weiner Blut_ and _Mein Teil_ were about, not all of Rammstein is like that…”

“But then, Ludwig’s brother Gilbert came to visit, and he started showing me some of _his music.”_

“Your brother is a musician?” He asked, interrupting Feliciano. The man didn’t seem bothered by it, though. Ludwig seemed to enjoy this question even less than the previous about what he did to help Feliciano learn German.

“Gilbert was the front-man and lead singer of band for a long time. He retired in 2010, but they were very successful in Europe.” Ludwig shared. The reluctance to talk about it was obvious on his face.

“I never knew that, Ludwig. What kind of a band was it?” Kiku asked him. That seemed to make Ludwig slightly _more_ uncomfortable, arm freezing in the process of taking a swing out of his beer.

“Punk Rock!” Feliciano supplied with a smile, and that almost made Alfred choke on his own drink.

Punk Rock.

Ludwig – straight laced, serious Ludwig, he had a Punk Rock singer as a a brother?

“Gilbert has a nice singing voice, it’s very pleasant to listen to, though his band was a bit too noisy at times.” Felicano started explaining “He’s still German, though and all Germans seem to sing a lot about nasty stuff like how men are pigs* and how this lady named Claudia loves her German Shepard too much* and how he’s a vampire* in a cemetery looking for virgin blood…”    Ludwig looked just about ready for the earth to open up and swallow him.

Alfred thought that was kinda standard for what he could imagined German Punk Rock being like. Then again – his experience with German music was limited to _99 Luftballoons_.

“…but Gilbert also has some very cute and sad songs that he wrote for Erzsi, which I really, really like. Wanna hear one? Ludwig can translate it for you!”

Alfred answered “Yes, please.” at the same time that Ludwig’s horrified face said “Please, no.”

Well, at least the whole night proved itself to be very entertaining. Feliciano happily started up their Smart TV and fired up Youtube – _So you can see the video too!_

The video was a futuristic nursing home, with skimpily dressed nurses. They went to take care of a man that he could only assume was one Gilbert Beilschmidt, with heavy make-up to appear like a sleazy old man. He leered at them as they gave him pills. The song started – and yeah, he could agree with Feliciano, the man had a really pleasant singing voice – the effect would have been nicer if he understood anything from the lyrics, but the only word he managed to get was “ _Perfect_ ”. Or…Perfekt – as Youtube had previously shown, there was a K in there.

“What’s he singing about, though?” Alfred asked. Ludwig sighed, like someone that was used to the question. Alfred could imagine Feliciano asking for a translation on the song from Ludwig.

“It starts with… _why can’t it be perfect like in a love song or a movie._ ”

“Hmm, but it’s very fun, no?” Feliciano added “The kind of tongue in cheek thing – why can’t it be perfect, with champagne under starlit skies and Barry Manilow on the radio. But then the twist is – that the boy thinks about sex too much and she talks about her ex when she shouldn’t and they fight too much. It’s still a happy song, because they realize that just being together makes it perfect!”

“How nice,” Kiku commented.

Alfred tried his best to appreciate the song for what it was – damn catchy and kinda cool – and think about any other kind of lyrics. Death misery and decay, tiny assholes, he could even be he singing about perfect pizza. Alfred would have enjoyed a song about perfect pizza.  

Because he had had the damn kissing-under-a-starlit-sky experience, and it _had_ been perfect, but it wasn’t worth a damn now. It hadn’t given him any sort of claim over Ivan, didn’t guarantee happiness or a happy ending or everlasting love.

But at least Ludwig’s brother and his band seemed cool enough.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So - as a note - 
> 
> Gilbert the Punk Rocker and his Band are 100% based on my absolute favorite German band ever, Die Ärzte and the songs that are referenced in this chapter are all Die Är
> 
> *Männer sind Schweine - Men are pigs. A very catchy song with tongue-in-cheeks lyrics, that's basically "Hello my dear, let me tell you all about how men only want have sex with you. God forbid you marry him". It's very fun - lyrics and vocal too.  
> * Claudia hat 'nen Schäferhund - Claudia has a Shepard Dog/German Shepard - It's basically a song about a lady named Claudia that loves her dog in a very inappropriate way - Ahem. Not exactly a PG song.  
> *Dein Vampyr - The Vampire. It's...exactly how you would imagine the most cliche vampire monologue ever - "I live in the cemetary, I want to love you forever, I crave the blood of virgin." Of course it's not exactly a serious song. 
> 
> Now - the song that does get translated - it's still Die Ärzte. and it's called Perfekt and it's one of my favorite songs ever. It's exactly how Ludwig and Feliciano translated - a dude that laments a lot about "why can't it be perfect, like a love song" and proceeds to elaborate all the absolutely over-the-top, tooth-rotting inducing cliches ever. Then the twist is - but you talk about your ex all the damn time, and I really just wanna have sex with you when you wanna be cute and romantic, and we fight all the time and you seriously kinda suck, but then you kiss me and I realize that I love you and makes it perfect. Basically, Perfekt is the best combination of sweet and funny and very, very self-aware. <3 
> 
> Also - Ahem. What was the point of all that? Well - obviously because we're gonna be meeting Gilbert and Erzsebet in the next chapter. I have literally been waiting for years to justify a way of writing old school German and Hungarian rock music into a fic, I finally found my opportunity.
> 
> Stay tuned for Alfred's Great Adventure of Trying-to-get-Over-Heartbreak-With-Various-Degrees-of-Success. 
> 
> (this author now only has to find a half decent reason to justify some good ole Nordic power metal bands in there. By god, I'm gonna try. )


End file.
